Belarusian BelStekloProm commissions upgraded glass furnace

GOMEL, 15 September (BelTA) – The unitary enterprise BelStekloProm has upgraded a glass furnace of its own, BelTA has learned.
The glass furnace can produce 260 tonnes of liquid glass per day. The upgrade will improve the quality of the products the company makes, will increase the output, and will reduce the consumption of natural gas (by up to 17%) and electricity. It will definitely have an effect on the enterprise’s profitability.
The enterprise’s Director General Nadezhda Dubovets said that the glass furnace was commissioned in September 2008. It was in use continuously since then due to peculiarities of the manufacturing process. The constant wear and tear had a negative effect on the state and capabilities of the equipment as time went by. The glass furnace is the only one in the post-Soviet space to have worked for 12 years. The upgraded furnace is expected to work for at least that long. The service life of a glass furnace is 8-10 years on the average.
The upgrade did not affect the design of the glass furnace. Instead the upgrade focused on using more economical materials from reputed manufacturers in order to reduce the consumption of electricity and natural gas. The materials were imported from India, Bulgaria, and Italy.
Several quality insurance procedures are triggered in the course of the manufacturing process.
The upgrade project took two years since documents were created and consultations with partners began. The operation of the glass furnace was halted in late July. It resumed operation in early September.
The enterprise has three manufacturing lines: two 10-section lines and one 8-section line. The latter is being upgraded as well. It will be recommissioned in 2021 and will allow making glass bottles using a new technology.
Nadezhda Dubovets said: “Glass is the best type of containers and the most environmentally friendly one. Brown glass is the optimal one for bottling beer. It allows beer to keep taste qualities and other parameters. It does not allow beer to oxidize. Beer stays as good as the day it was bottled.”
Over Br10 million has been invested in the upgrade project. The investment will be recouped over the course of four years.
The BelStekloProm enterprise resides in the free economic zone (FEZ) Gomel-Raton. It specializes in making premium glass bottles. The enterprise uses only high-quality raw materials and modern technologies. BelStekloProm has a considerable manufacturing potential. Equipment from Germany, Italy, and the USA is used.
BelStekloProm primarily caters to breweries located in Belarus and abroad. The constant importers include leading breweries of Germany, Ukraine, Czechia, Poland, Finland, Lithuania, and Estonia. Turkmenistan is the remotest destination. Prior to the coronavirus pandemic the enterprise exported about 37% of the output. The shipments have been halved since then due to quarantine measures implemented by individual countries.