The Belarusian construction materials industry includes over 500 commercial entities, which output capacity can virtually fully satisfy needs of the national civil engineering industry. The number includes over 120 enterprises that make cement, granite macadam and dolomite macadam, inert construction materials, wall materials, and facing materials, namely ceramic tiles, bricks, silicate and ceramic blocks and stones, and materials made of foamed concrete. Polished glass sheets are now made in Belarus as well as special kinds of glass, construction lime, concrete and reinforced concrete products, including for the purposes of industrial house building, gypsum goods, dry building mixes, heat-insulating materials, and a host of other things. In other words, one can confidently say that all the necessary basic construction materials are made in the country not only for domestic consumption but for export as well. The modernization of construction materials enterprises continues. The manufacturing of new products begins in order to reduce the import of such goods as much as possible. Belarusian Architecture and Construction Minister Ruslan Parkhamovich told BelTA what results had been achieved by upgrading the manufacturing facilities.
The manufacturing capacity of Belarusian construction materials enterprises was primarily developed and modernized in 2006-2015 when enterprises of the Architecture and Construction Ministry alone implemented over 120 investment projects. It allowed considerably increased the capacity to make cement, wall materials, heat-insulating materials, polished glass sheets, and other materials.
Among the largest projects implemented lately the minister mentioned two interrelated investment projects. Those are the modernization of the current manufacturing facilities of OAO Belgips in 2016 and the construction of a new plant as part of OAO Belgips to make gypsum-based construction materials in the town of Gatovo, Minsk District in May 2019. The new plant can make 30 million m2 of gypsum wallboards, 500,000 m2 of gypsum partition blocks, 100,000 tonnes of dry building mixes, 8,000 tonnes of premixes, and 15,000 m3 of foamed perlite. It was the first enterprise to make premixes and foamed perlite in Belarus. The plant allows fully satisfying the domestic demand for gypsum wallboards. Over 60% of the products are exported. By the way, in 2020 the import of such products dropped by 18% or by nearly 1 million m2 in comparison with 2019, Ruslan Parkhamovich added.
Apart from that, OAO Gomelglass has set up an enterprise for the industrial recycling of glass. The Gomel-based enterprise now makes laminated glass, energy-saving glass, sun-screening glass, and multifunctional glass as part of the project. The division can make 8 million m2 of glass per annum. By the way, energy-saving glass can help achieve energy-saving goals in transparent structures and buildings in the country and abroad. Over 80% of the output is exported. The import of this kind of merchandise shows negative dynamics. The decrease is close to 60,000m2 of glass. A project was implemented at premises of OAO Neman Glassworks to make an innovative product – heat-insulating goods made of glass wool. These are new products for Belarus and have managed to earn a positive reputation in Europe, Ukraine, and Russia. The enterprise is now working hard to step up presence on the home market.
The architecture and construction minister also mentioned the construction of dry cement manufacturing lines at Belarusian Cement Plant, Krichevtsementnoshifer, and Krasnoselskstroymaterialy. These are the largest projects implemented in the Belarusian civil engineering recently. In essence, three new cement mills with the total output capacity of 4.5 million tonnes of cement clinker per annum were built. “If we compare 2020 to the year that precedes the year when the new lines were commissioned, in other words, to 2011, then the annual cement import has been reduced by virtually $12 million,” Ruslan Parkhamovich said. The modernization of the cement industry has not stopped. The enterprises are now busy implementing energy-saving measures to replace imported coal with Belarusian fuel and energy resources (peat and in the future refuse-derived fuel aka RDF).
Ruslan Parkhamovich stressed that despite all the projects that allow substantially expanding the lineup of manufactured products stepping up the presence of Belarusian construction materials on the home market is a responsible task that the ministry continues working on. Talking about the most significant projects being implemented in the Belarusian construction materials industry, the minister mentioned the launch of production of glass containers using innovative energy-effective and resource-saving technologies at premises of OAO Grodno Glassworks ($21.7 million worth of these products were imported in 2020), the expansion of the output and the product choice of ceramic tiles in Beryozastroymaterialy (about $47 million worth of these goods were imported in 2020), and the production of goods made of medical glass in Belmedsteklo (about $5 million worth of ampoules are imported).
“Efforts to increase the output capacity of our enterprises are not meant to fully substitute import but to satisfy the domestic demand for modern, quality construction materials, which are competitive on the home market and abroad,” Ruslan Parkhamovich summarized.
