As Kirsan Ilyumzhinov reported immediately after the signing ceremony, the construction of the first sugar factory in the Tselina village will begin in September. “The cost of the project is 16 billion 200 million roubles or about $ 250 million, of which approximately 30% will be Chinese investment,” the head of the ISC explained. “The construction will be conducted by the Chinese company Harkan Engineering, which is known by the construction of nuclear power plants and other complex industrial facilities in 24 countries. The plant will start working in September 2021.”
Ilyumzhinov stressed that a project of the sugar factory was among the ten economic priorities of the Rostov region government: “In 2015, President Vladimir Putin supported and endorsed this idea. In my opinion, it is symbolic that the signing of the agreement coincided in time with the visit of Vladimir Vladimirovich to China.”
According to the head of ISC, the choice of the Rostov region as the site for the construction of the plant was due to the presence of large volumes of raw materials for the new enterprise in the region: “Rostov farmers grow annually several million tons of sugar beet, and there is not a single enterprise on its processing around. As a result, they have to transport beets for 500 km to the Krasnodar region. With the launch of the first Don Sugar Factory, the problem of selling and processing sugar beet for Rostov agricultural producers will be fully resolved.” According to the project documentation, the plant built with the participation of the Chinese side will process 12 thousand tons of beets per day.
According to Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, immediately after the signing of the agreement, it was decided to establish a joint working group, which next week will arrive in Russia to visit Moscow and the future construction site in Rostov oblast: “All the necessary communications, gas, water , electricity has already been supplied to the construction site, so there will be no technological delays with the start of the project.”
“The contract for the first Don Sugar Refinery is not only an economic, but also a political project,” said political expert Pavel Golod. “I have no doubt that its signing was not unexpectedly coincided with the visit of the Russian President to China. Beijing has long shown interest in various major economic and infrastructure projects in southern Russia. And the construction of the largest sugar factory in the Rostov region, on the territory of which, incidentally, the international shipping channel Eurasia lobbied by Beijing may pass is, most likely, only the beginning.”