Big production of a small town
The Kazakh insulants conquer foreign markets
In the city of Makinsk, located 200 km from the capital of Kazakhstan, with a population of just over 17 thousand people, there are more than 10 large and over 20 small enterprises. Among the industries are factories of agriculture, mechanical engineering and building materials, which supply a number of countries with their products.
One of them is the Makinsk Plant for the production of heat-insulating materials based on basalt rocks with the MakWool trademark. In Soviet times, there was a Plant for the production of piston rings for tractors, trucks and cars. With the collapse of the Union, its products and qualified personnel became unclaimed, and by the beginning of the 2000s, only the buildings of numerous workshops and some other infrastructure remained.
In 2010, investors came to Makinsk to create a modern enterprise for the production of mineral wool insulation from basalt. In 2017, the Makinsk Plant with Italian Equipment Gamma Meccanica S.p.A. produced the first products, but soon the Plant stopped production due to problems with working capital financing.
In mid-2019, the Plant was modernized, re-equipped and resumed production - the manufacture of heat-insulating materials based on basalt rocks. The scope of the material is practically unlimited, it is used in the construction of aerated concrete blocks and sandwich panels for the manufacture of which a mineral wool slab is required.
For the third year now, MakWool has been working 24 hours a day and in several shifts, turning stones into insulation, which are bought up by the Kazakh and Foreign Builders. “Baiterek” holding and its subsidiaries helped the enterprise to resume production. Later, “ESC “KazakhExport” JSC helped to enter foreign markets by providing export insurance, which specializes in financial and insurance support for exporters of Kazakhstan. Mineral wool insulation based on basalt rocks meets the needs of developers in Kazakhstan, Russia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The plans include expanding exports to Ukraine, Poland and Bulgaria.
Today MakWool operates at 90 percent of its design capacity, producing 30 thousand tons of products per year. For the residents of the Bulandinsk district of the Akmola region, the creation of the Plant in the industrial city of Makinsk was a significant event. The qualified specialists, who remained in the city, have again become in demand, and young people are being trained in new technical specialties to work at the Plant. Now the Plant employs about 200 people, of which 150 are production personnel from Makinsk.
Perhaps the history of this Makinsk Plant is one example of how the old but modernized base, competent management, the correct use of state support tools, the objective assessment of demand and potential markets, played a perfect symphony. And there are more than one such examples in Kazakhstan. How many are there other small towns with large and small enterprises of which many Kazakhs have not even heard?
