Turkmenistan is a country of the commonwealth of Independent states of ex-USSR. After its disintegration from the Soviet Union in 1991, the then President Saparmurat Turkmenbashi made industrialization of Turkmenistan a first priority. As a part of this drive, GAP INSAAT of Çalik Holdings, Turkey, commissioned the first ever paper mill in Turkmenistan at Yaslik.

The plant consisted of two production lines designed to use two local raw materials – wheat straw and cotton linters to provide feed pulp to the paper machine. HDO was responsible for the entire the wheat straw based pulp fiber line and recausticizing plant on turnkey basis comprising of:

• Raw material wet cleaning plant
• Continuous digester system
• Brown stock washing system
• Screening and cleaning system
• Oxygen delignification system
• Oxygen preparation plant
• Total chlorine free (TCF) bleaching system
• Recausticizing plant

There were more than 230 people, including 15 Hindustan Dorr-Oliver supervisors, working on this project to complete the plant erection on time. HDO supervisors had to learn the local language, Turkmen, in order to communicate with the local work force. All the equipment supplied by HDO had to undergo rigorous testing in order to withstand the extreme climatic conditions (from +45 to -15 degree C) at Yaslik. After successful Performance Guarantee Test Run, the project was officially handed over to the client on 28th Aug, 2005.

Accomplishments

• HDO successfully commissioned an overseas EPC project on-time and delivered guaranteed performance
• Despite major language barriers, HDO successfully completed the training program for local Turkmenistan plant operators
• HDO was able to provide major cost savings to the client as 80% of the equipment supplied was proprietary HDO equipment and was manufactured and transported from the HDO manufacturing facility at Vatwa, Ahmedabad
• The client was very happy with production line provided by HDO and appreciated the effort put in by HDO engineers to complete the project in Turkmenistan