Refining and Gold Mining Industries in Kara-Balta

Mining and Processing Plant

In 1955, a mining and processing plant specializing in the processing of uranium-containing ores was built in a short time on the southern outskirts of the settlement. It was a powerful closed-type enterprise that invited specialists from all over the Union, selecting the best personnel on site. The plant processed six uranium deposits, creating residential settlements for workers, but the main contingent was based here, and soon a beautiful settlement, Kosh-Tegirmen, or "mailbox Frunze-33," emerged a little away from the auxiliary productions and far from the mining and metallurgical plant, surrounded by greenery.

The plant was the embodiment of a fully self-sufficient production unit. Its entire industrial complex and settlement were built by its own construction division, SU-4, under the leadership of Sergey Nikolaevich Ananyev. The repair and mechanical plant produced drilling rigs and equipment for the development of deposits. The auto repair plant "treated" heavy-duty "BelAZ" and "Kraz" trucks that transported radioactive materials and required special working conditions and decontamination means. The vehicles came from the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant, Transbaikalia, the Urals, and the Kyzylkum Desert.

The plant also included a CHPP, the "Electroterm" plant, which produced supports for power lines and a number of other products, an experimental plant specializing in the production of non-standard equipment and industrial pumps, as well as departments and services for household needs, cultural institutions, schools, kindergartens, and trade enterprises.

In 1997, all these auxiliary units were removed from the structure of the KGRC. However, even now, the enterprises that remain on the balance of the KGRC, especially the refining and gold mining production, occupy leading positions in the production of industrial products in the city's enterprises, accounting for 87.7 percent of their output.

Settlement of Kara-Balta