AIM

Kazakhstan’s robust economic growth over the last 5 years has seen the demand for cement increased from slightly over a million ton in 2000 to about 5 million tons in 2005. The pace of economic growth is expected to remain unabated as the world demand for oil and minerals will remain strong over the foreseeable future. Kazakhstan, which has proven vast reserves of minerals, oil and gas is well poised to exploit the growing demand of these scarce resources.

This certainly augurs well for the country’s construction industry in general and cement industry in particular. Central Asia Cement JSC is certainly well poised to exploit the growing cement demand in the country as, in addition to its current production capacity of 800,000 tons of cement from the wet lines, it also has the potential to increase its production capacity further by just refurbishing one or two of its mothballed dry lines, each with a rated annual production capacity of about 1 million tons of clinker or about 1.3 million tons of cement.

In view of the above, Steppe Cement Limited, the ultimate holding company of Central Asia Cement has come to AIM of London Stock Exchange to broaden its investment base and to enhance its profile in the international markets and cement industry. This would improve the Company’s ability to attract funding for expansion of its operations as part of its long-term growth strategy.