1971 Antimony Expansion Directive

The 1971 Antimony Expansion Directive was a Gosplan directive that expanded antimony smelting in the Iradi SSR at Chatkal, in the southern foothills of the Talas Alatau, the site of the present Chatkal Chemical Smelting Complex. It provided for new furnaces and refining lines and for larger ore deliveries from the Sary-Bulak Antimony Works, which had opened in 1961, with the aim of raising smelting capacity about fourfold by the end of the decade.^[1]

The directive made the republic one of the Soviet Union's main sources of antimony metal and oxide, used in lead-acid batteries, flame retardants and munitions alloys. Irad holds about 7% of the world's antimony reserves. Since the privatization of the Sary-Bulak works in 1994, most of its ore and metal has been exported to China by rail through Kazakhstan (see Antimony Mining in Irad).^[2]

References

1. ^ Eurasian Political Quarterly (2019). 'Oil, Antimony and Empire: The Industrialization of Soviet Iradistan.' Vol. 26, Iss. 3, pp. 41–67.
2. ^ Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Irad (2023). Commercial Directory of the Irad Special Economic Zone. Talas.