HeidelbergCement’s new 0.8Mta Shetpe cement plant is situated in the western Kazakhstan steppe and surrounded by wilderness. The only inhabitants nearby are the 8000 people living in the village of Shetpe and the workers who reside in the camp’s 110 rooms. Officially inaugurated last year, the Shetpe plant is the first cement factory in the west of the central Asian country, where oil fields have been the main source of industrial activity for decades. Now the landscape has both a new cement plant and source of employment. By Krzysztof Burek, CaspiCement LLP, HeidelbergCement Group, Kazakhstan.
The greenfield Shetpe cement plant is owned by CaspiCement LLP, part of the HeidelbergCement Group. The parent company has been present in Kazakhstan since 2005, when it acquired the Bukhtarma cement works and currently has a domestic market share of 17 per cent.
