Kazphosphate is the flagship of Kazakhstan's chemical industry

On 27 October 1999 Kazphosphate LLP, the first company in Kazakhstan, and in all CIS countries, was founded. Incidentally, there are only four countries in the world where yellow phosphorus is produced - the USA, China, the Netherlands and Kazakhstan. Today, the plant produces up to twenty different types of phosphorus products, it is yellow phosphorus, as well as sodium tripolyphosphate, various phosphorus-containing mineral fertilizers, feed phosphates, sulfuric acid and much more. The new industrial giant includes: mining and processing complex "Karatau", Novodzhambulskiy phosphate plant, mineral fertilizers plant, railway transport complex, plant for production of synthetic detergents. And today this company is the flagship of the chemical industry of our country. According to the results of 2019, almost 94% of mineral and chemical phosphate fertilizers are produced by "Kazphosphate".

Photo by Development Bank of Kazakhstan

How did it all start...

Of course, the manufacture of products unique for the domestic chemical industry did not start from nothing. For instance, in the middle of the twentieth century, a plant was opened in Zhambyl region, the main supplier of raw materials for which became Karatau phosphate rock basin. Because of this deposit, Kazakhstan is one of the ten countries with 90% of the world's phosphate resources in terms of reserves. Over time, the region has developed a whole complex of enterprises producing yellow phosphorus, sodium tripolyphosphate, orthophosphoric acid, mineral fertilizers and other phosphate compounds, which were supplied not only to the former USSR republics, but also to Asian and European countries. This meant that the products of the Kazakhstan enterprise were in great demand in the world market. The plant was part of the All-Union Production Enterprise "Soyuzphosphor". Incidentally, the management of the enterprise was located in the then capital of Kazakhstan - Alma-Ata. However, with the collapse of the vast empire, the unique production almost fell into disrepair. The situation was also exacerbated by the fact that the complex was transferred from one investor to another. Moreover, many experts consider one of the reasons for the decline of the company to be the fact that all investors who came during this period took the plant under their trusteeship. Therefore, no one was particularly eager to invest in the modernization of the complex, and production volumes were decreasing. And under these conditions, of course, full revival of phosphate production was not on the table. The employees of the plants did not receive their salaries for months.

1999 - the time of revival of the giant

However, everything changed in 1999 when a new investor came here. The company quickly managed to establish production of phosphorus up to 6 tons, sodium tripolyphosphate - up to 7 thousand tons, up to 70 thousand tons of phosphate ore and mineral fertilizers - up to 15 thousand tons. Of course, these were not previous volumes. For example, in 1989, Novodzhambulskiy Phosphate Plant gave the country more than 163 thousand tons of products. It was a record figure. However, this was only the beginning. Very soon the world market began to talk about Kazakhstan's giant of chemical industry once more. Today more than six thousand employees work at Kazphosphate, technological equipment of the enterprises allows not only to carry out full processing of phosphate raw materials, but also to ship end products to consumers. For this purpose, they own their own railroad transport complex. Kazphosphate Mineral Fertilizers Plant

December 2016. Traditional national TV bridge with the participation of the First President of Kazakhstan - Elbasy Nursultan Nazarbayev. It was then that the unique plant - Mineral Fertilizers Plant of Kazphosphate LLP - was revived as part of the project "Reconstruction of the Department of Extractive Phosphoric Acid". It became a historical event not only for the chemical industry of our country, but also for the domestic agro-industrial complex.

Photo by kazphosphate.kz

When the new production facility was launched, the goal was already set - to bring the production of mineral fertilizers to 1 million tons per year in the very next few years. For this purpose the reconstruction of EPA-2 was carried out, a workshop for the production of expanded range of mineral fertilizers was built. At the initial stage, the annual production capacity was 220 thousand tons of extractive phosphoric acid, which was mainly supplied to the domestic market. And today the company's products are supplied to the markets of 27 countries. The plant has ambitious tasks to bring the output of mineral fertilizers to 500 tons per year. And starting from 2022 it is planned to produce 1 million tons of mineral fertilizers annually. And it means that there will be one more shop on manufacture of ammophos. The company's investment costs in 2018 amounted to about 13 billion tenge. In 2019, the company will invest about 21 billion tenge. During his visit to the plant, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev stated: "The plant is the flagship of the country's chemical industry and one of the leading producers of yellow phosphorus in the world. You have every opportunity to enter international markets with your products. It is necessary to further improve the competitiveness".