Kazakh and Turkish companies have signed several agreements on investment and trade-economic cooperation between the two countries within the framework of Kazakhstan and Turkey Investment Forum in Ankara. During the forum, 24 agreements were signed and the total amount of the agreements was around $1.7 billion.
According the Astana Times, one of the agreement signed between two countries was construction of a plant for soda ash production which is used in metallurgical, chemical and glass making industries. Yıldırım Holding agreed to construct $220 million soda ash production plant in the Zhambyl region in Kazakhstan. President of Yıldırım Holding, Robert Yuksel Yıldırım, revealed the proposal during his meeting with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev in the capital in September, when the sides discussed the prospects of chemical industry investment projects. The holding expects to kick off construction in 2019 and commission the plant in 2021. Its estimated that the project will create 350 job.
At the early stage, production capacity of the plant will be about 400,000 tons of soda ash per year at the early stages. This amount is almost equal to the volume of soda being imported from Russia. At the second stage, it is planned to increase production capacity to 1 million tons of soda per year and start exporting the products.
