Kara-Bulak Grain Logistics Depot

The Kara-Bulak Grain Logistics Depot (also called the Kara-Bulak Grain Elevators) is a grain storage, drying and rail-loading complex at Kara-Bulak, a market town in the Talas District of the Irad Special Economic Zone (ISEZ). It receives wheat, barley and some maize from farms in the middle and lower Talas valley and ships grain by rail to mills in Nurzhan and to buyers in Kazakhstan.^[1]

History

The depot began in 1968 as a Soviet grain-receiving enterprise built beside the rail spur that runs up the valley from Talas. Its concrete silo bank was enlarged in the 1980s. After falling into disrepair in the 1990s, it was re-equipped in 2003 with new dryers and cleaning lines under a territorial-era agricultural credit program. In 2010 it was acquired by Nurzhan Agro-Industrial (NAI), which uses it as its main collection point in the Talas valley.^[1][2]

Facilities

The complex has a rated storage capacity of about 150,000 tonnes, mostly in reinforced-concrete silos, with additional flat stores for barley and feed grain. It has receiving pits for farm trucks, grain dryers, cleaners and a loading gallery that can fill a train of hopper wagons on the spur. Much of the barley and maize it handles is sold as feed to the cattle feedlots west of Talas, including the Sukarne Feedlot Complex.^[1]

Farmers' groups have complained that NAI's control of the depot and of other storage in the ISEZ leaves them few alternative buyers at harvest. The company says its purchase prices follow regional markets.^[2]

References

1. ^ Talas Basin Agricultural Directorate (2022). Grain Storage and Marketing in the Talas Valley. Talas.
2. ^ Talas Herald (2019). 'At harvest, one buyer: farmers and the grain elevators.' Talas.