Karagonda brewery Tour

Karagonda Brewery tour

Today, Friday a day off from the orphanage we got a tour of the Karagonda brewery by a friend (Jeff) we have met in the hotel. Jeff works for a British firm who has been contracted to install a bottling line for the brewery. The brewery has seen an increase of beer sales of 90 percent per year and 172 percent in the summer months. Apparently, Kazaks are starting to prefer beer. A Turkish company, who is the fastest growing brewing company in the Middle East, owes the brewery. It dominates the Turkism market and has several breweries in Georgia Kazakhstan, Romania, and some of the other Stans. The bottling line is able to produce 1000 bottles per minute, the bottle cleaner holds 35,000 bottles at one time. The line will produce three pallets per minute. He is faced with unbelievable obstacles, and then building that the bottling equipment is in did not get finished on time. The company hired to erect the building could not afford to buy the steel and neglected to tell anyone. The 150,000 square foot building was started in the winter however progress was very slow. The temperature was -40f with 60 mile an hour winds so the steel works could only work when the frost lessened on the steel beams. It gets very cold here in the winter the winds blow from the north at the artic with nothing to stop them because it is so flat. In the summer, Jeff says that it gets very hot because the winds blow the heat from the southern deserts and the Sahara. It is not a place to have a summer home for sure. Jeff told us that that works on the project mechanical engineers, welders’ plumbers and fabricators and electricians all earn about 80 dollars a day. At five days per week, that is roughly $21,000 per year. The secretary at the brewery earns $20 per day or $5200 per year. In contrast, Mia’s caregivers we believe earn about $1.20 per hour or about $2500 per year. Tara, I, and the other couples are going to tip them before we leave, as they are the ones who really do all the work. A 15-dollar tip is about a 1/3 of their weekly pay. Now we can start to understand how more then 50 percent of the country lives under the poverty line. I got off the subject a little but the tour was cool and it was nice to have someone speck English to us for an hour. Actually the beer is good it is sort of a light pilsner and I have one every night at dinner.