Kazakhstan Aluminium Smelter is awarded the special Quality Leader prize of the Altyn Sapa Award of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan
JSC Kazakhstan Aluminium Smelter, an enterprise of Eurasian Resources Group (ERG), has won the competition for the Altyn Sapa Award of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The enterprise has been awarded the special Quality Leader prize. The prize was presented to the co-founder of the enterprise, Alexander Machkevitch, by the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev at a special ceremony during a teleconference held to mark the Industrialization Day.
KAS is one of the first major industrial projects recently implemented in Kazakhstan. It is the country's first and only producer of primary aluminium.
For nine years, Kazakhstan Aluminium Smelter has been manufacturing domestically produced aluminium that fully complies with international standards. Aluminium produced in Kazakhstan has been registered on the London Metal Exchange. This proves the high quality of primary aluminium manufactured by the smelter.
Construction of the smelter started in 2005 and was completed within a record-breaking time of 27 months. In September 2007, KAS delivered the first batch of domestically produced aluminium. By the end of 2007, Kazakhstan Aluminium Smelter had manufactured 11,000 tonnes of primary aluminium.
In June 2010, President Nursultan Nazarbayev launched the second production line, and the smelter reached the design capacity of 250,000 tonnes. By the end of 2011, the smelter's output reached 251,000 tonnes of domestically produced aluminium.
Since it was put into operation, Kazakhstan Aluminium Smelter has produced a total of 1,866,627 tonnes of primary aluminium.
KAS not only manufactures its core products (20-kilogram grade A8 and A85 aluminium ingots) but also fully meets its internal demand for baked anodes. In 2014, Kazakhstan Aluminium Smelter established a new division: an electrode production unit. This marked a new milestone in the development of the aluminium production cluster in the Pavlodar Region.
In addition to meeting high quality standards, KAS also aims to increase the share of local content and reduce the cost of production. This year, the smelter has implemented a wide range of measures in this field. KAS has almost completely abandoned the use of imported raw materials and core components in aluminium production. The company is about to complete full replacement of casting moulds manufactured abroad. Now the moulds are made by JSC Aluminium of Kazakhstan (an enterprise of Eurasian Resources Group). Similarly, current leads are now supplied to KAS by JSC SSGPO, another ERG enterprise. The company has also started to use calcined petroleum coke from Pavlodar in aluminium production. Eventually it will replace raw materials supplied by Russian producers.
