Foreign food companies to invest $40 million in Kazakhstan

Wanlin Group Limited, a Chinese food company, is planning to invest $30 million to build a vegetable dehydration plant in the Jambyl region. On the other hand, Turkish company Arbel has already built a bean processing factory in the Kostanay region. It is going to start operation in May. According to the Ministry of Agriculture of Kazakhstan, at the first stage, the company invested $8.5 million in the project.

Wanlin Group Limited is a well-known company in the sphere of production and distribution of dehydrated vegetables, which are popular ingredients in a wide range of food products and drinks. According to President Li Yantao, the company is planning to launch the plant in three stages within five years. Wanlin Group has already planted onions in three districts of the Jambyl region to get more information about the potential yield. The company runs two big vegetable dehydration plants. Its products have been exported to a variety of clients like Nestle, Unilever and Kerry across the U.S. and Europe.

Turkish Arbel is going to open its bean processing plant in the Kostanay region in the middle of May. The new facility is expected to process about 170,000 tons of peas, red and green lentils, chickpeas and hard wheat a year. Hussein Arslan, head of the company said that the new plant is going to create 70 jobs. The first stage of investment by the Turkish company reached $8.5 million. Currently, Arbel specialists are installing the equipment and completing the process paperwork.

«Once this project is launched, the Turkish company may want to consider another project of deep wheat processing. This is a very promising technology given that Kazakhstan is one of the global leaders in terms of high-quality wheat production,» Minister of Agriculture Yerbol Karashukeev said.

The official underlined that foreign investors aren’t going to claim the land in Kazakhstan. All they want is to cooperate with local farmers.

In 2022, Kazakhstani company Fincraft Resources and Indian Monnet Group established a joint venture TB Alloys Kazakh LTD. The two partners are planning to build a ferroalloy production plant in the industrial zone in the vicinity of Taraz. Indian representatives from Monnet Group have even discussed this plan with the regional authorities. They want to launch a ferro silicomanganese plant and create 450 jobs.

In the fall of 2022, Kazakhstan and the E.U. agreed to cooperate in the sphere of commodity production, manufacturing of accumulators and hydrogen fuel. The E.U. is going to facilitate the production and reprocessing of rare metals in Kazakhstan.

In March 2023, the government of Kazakhstan, the state-owned holding Samruk Kazyna and Saudi company ACWA Power signed an agreement on developing, financing, constructing and entering into service of a one-gigawatt wind power station in the Jetysu region. The start of construction of the station is expected in 2025. In 2022, Samruk Kazyna and French Total Eren negotiated the creation of an up-to-date wind farm. The two sides are planning to build one gigawatt renewable power station worth $1.9 billion in the Jambyl region.

In addition, the Ministry of Energy, Samruk Kazyna and Masdar, a company from the U.A.E., agreed to build a 500-megawatt wind power station in the Jambyl region or in the Turkestan region. This station is expected to have the ability to accumulate energy.

In April, the Chinese Shandong Port Group (SPG) announced its plan to build a logistical park with warehouses and a land port in the Almaty region to open access to markets in South Korea, Japan, China, the EEU, Caucasus and the Middle East. In April 2023, authorities of the Jambyl region reported that Turkish Bazar Fur wants to build a home appliances manufacturing site in the region. In a separate development, Kazakhstan Engineering has been negotiating with Czech Skoda to assemble semi-knocked down trolleybuses in Almaty.