Innovative project to replace imported aluminum with tinplate in progress in Miory District

“The most popular products are in the range between 0.13mm and 0.38mm. Clients are now starting to move toward thinner profiles: 0.13-0.15mm thick. Taking into account the actual order portfolio, the plant’s designed output capacity is 119,000 tonnes of tinplate per year. Tinplate is used everywhere: in the production of canned beans, corn, peas, tomatoes, fish and meat preserves. It is also used in cosmetology, for example, in the manufacture of eyeshadow packaging, in the chemical industry (aerosols), and in the gas industry (natural gas cylinders). Our enterprise is initially focused on export. The main target market is the Russian Federation to where we supply about 80% of our products. The share of supplies to the domestic market is 17%. The other export destinations include Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and remote countries, for example, Pakistan,” Arkady Ralovets told reporters about the main areas of the plant’s operation.

He emphasized that the company is implementing an innovative and import-substituting project to the order of a Belarusian enterprise. “This is a project to replace aluminum with products of our enterprise. At the beginning of this year a working group was established. We fully studied the physical and mechanical properties of aluminum and the requirements that the client places on this material, and by selecting the chemical composition of steel and specific physical and mechanical properties of the material, we have managed to replace aluminum with tinplate, fully satisfying all the client’s requirements. No one in the world has done this except us, this is why it is quite a daring project. This field is very promising because prices in non-ferrous metallurgy are rising exponentially while our material is cheaper and more advantageous for domestic manufacturers. This is not only an innovative but also an import-substituting project. We plan to complete it in the first half of the year. We have already produced a pilot batch and delivered it to the customer,” the deputy director general noted.

The plant uses equipment that is extremely rare in the post-Soviet space, for example, a laser texturing machine. This technology uses a laser to apply a pattern to the surface of a work roll, which will subsequently be imprinted onto the tinplate surface during manufacturing, improving the adhesion of the lacquer to the sheet. Thus, the plant will satisfy the demand for the entire range of tinplate products from glossy to matte. Thanks to that, the enterprise can compete with leading global tinplate manufacturers and produce metal in accordance with international standards.

Apart from that, the modernized high-tech lines of the plant completely automatically control the quality of the surface of the products being manufactured and sheet thickness down to a few microns.

By the way, in August 2022 the president visited the enterprise and made a decision to transfer it to state ownership. Today the plant operates smoothly. In 2025 it made about 58,000 tonnes of tinplate.

Sergei Gunko, head of the founding company and director of OAO Beltsvetmet, noted following the prime minister’s visit to the enterprise that he and Aleksandr Turchin had discussed a promising project that is also planned to be implemented in Miory District. “The head of government was informed about the strategy for managing financial flows in the near future. We also outlined one of our future projects: the construction of a facility for lacquering and lithography of tinplate on the territory of the existing plant. It will allow Belarusian dairy and meat processing plants to reduce the cost of their end products. As a result of today’s visit a plan for implementing this strategy was adopted, and it was backed by the prime minister,” he emphasized.