In March 2010 Belarus and Kazakhstan came to an agreement with regard to the establishment of a joint venture called KAZBELAZ for spare parts production, assembly and technical maintenance of BELAZ mining equipment. Recently, this came to frutition with the certification of the first BELAZ dump truck assembled at the joint venture with payload capacity of 45 t having been completed.

The sales of the trucks are expected to begin in 2013. Open pit mining of coal, copper, iron ore and bauxite continues to expand in Kazakhstan, and BELAZ equipment is already well established in the country with its mining trucks of 30 to 220 t capacity.

China is also a major growth market and on October 31, a delegation headed by Jiang Yao Ping, Chinese Deputy Minister of Commerce, visited BELAZ. Representatives of AVIC International were among the members of the delegation – BELAZ has had long-term co-operation with this company, strengthened through the establishment of the joint venture AVIC – BELAZ Mining Equipment in 2009. BELAZ states: “The aim of the visit of our Chinese partners was to see the ground test of the AC-AC traction drive system АЕ220 which was developed by them and installed on a 220 t dump truck, as well as to conduct technical and commercial negotiations.”