"The French company received a license for exploration and by the end of May it is going to begin studying the existing raw material base for the plants construction, Mukhitdinov said.
According to Mukhitdinov the French company expects to complete exploration by mid-2012 and begin developing the mine and building the cement plant starting next summer. Construction will be completed within three years. In July 2010 Lafarge and Uzstroimaterialy signed an agreement of intent to jointly build a plant producing cement using a dry method. The project is estimated at approximately US$250m.
