General Electric to make electric drives in Belarus

The U.S. corporation General Electric intends to start making electric drives in Belarus, BelTA learned from representatives of Belarusian Autoworks (BelAZ trademark) after a delegation of the American corporation led by the director general of GE Transportation Mining, a daughter enterprise of General Electric, visited the Belarusian company on 21 July.

Joint work on the project to localize and make GE electric drives at Belarusian enterprises was the purpose of the visit, BelAZ representatives noted. The source specified that the electric drives are intended for BelAZ rock haulers. For now BelAZ mainly relies on Siemens electric drives.

BelAZ representatives also said that the talks on 21 July focused on stepping up the joint efforts to promote BelAZ rock haulers powered by GE electric drives on promising CIS and non-CIS markets — Latin America, Africa, India, Indonesia.

After getting familiar with the Belarusian enterprise the director general of GE Transportation Mining expressed hope for tighter cooperation and said it was quite feasible.

Cooperation between OAO BelAZ and General Electric began in 2006 when the American company supplied the first electric drives GE150AC for the rock haulers BelAZ 7513 with the carrying capacity of 130 tonnes. At present GE electric drives are primarily used for dump trucks with the carrying capacity of 130 tonnes (BelAZ 7513) as well as vehicles with the basic carrying capacity of 220-240 tonnes.

Founded in September 1948, the Zhodino-based automobile engineering enterprise Belarusian Autoworks (BelAZ) was incorporated into a public joint-stock company (OAO) in 2010. As of October 2012 OAO BelAZ is the managing company of BelAZ Holding. BelAZ makes dump trucks with the carrying capacity of 30 tonnes and up. BelAZ specializes in making mine dump trucks, frontal wheeled loaders and bulldozers, tow trucks, special vehicles for underground operations, heavy-duty trucks for metallurgy industry, and other specialized vehicles. BelAZ accounts for a third of the global market of rock haulers.