As much as €61 million has already been spent on building a new Belgips factory in the town of Gatovo, Minsk District, BelTA learned from Belarusian Architecture and Construction Minister Anatoly Cherny on 5 August.

The official said: “The new factory is scheduled for launch in July 2019 but we have to finish all the construction and installation work by autumn. So far €61 million has been spent as part of the contract. The sum will be slightly larger than €70 million at the end.”

The new Gatovo-based factory will be able to make 30 million m2 of plasterboard sheets, 500,000m2 of partition blocks, and 100,000 tonnes of dry construction mixtures per year. Those are considerable figures, which are sufficient for satisfying the domestic demand and securing export, believes Anatoly Cherny.

BelTA reported earlier that the Russian company Volma was allowed to buy the state-owned package of shares in OAO Belgips in line with Belarus president decree No.34 of 16 January 2014. The sale was conditioned on the signing of the investment agreement on modernizing the existing enterprise of OAO Belgips and on building a gypsum-based construction materials factory in the town of Gatovo, Minsk District. The construction of the new enterprise began in October 2015.

Anatoly Cherny said that a number of other projects are being implemented in the Belarusian civil engineering industry. OAO Keramin is busy replacing two tile lines to make new formats, which sell well abroad. OAO Gomelglass is about to finish some projects. The company is about to reach the designed capacity to make energy-effective multimodal glass. Documents are in the pipeline for the project to burn refuse derived fuel (RDF) at OAO Krasnoselskstroymaterialy.