Arkalyk: How the City Is Seeking a New Role

How a former bauxite center is being rebuilt as a hub for the entire Torgai region

Why is the state investing in Arkalyk again — a city that lost its status as a regional capital, a significant share of its population, and its bauxite mine? The answer, “to save a former single-industry town,” explains too little. The current plan covers Arkalyk together with Amangeldy and Zhangeldy districts; a new road is supposed to link the center of the country with the west through Torgai; and production projects are built around livestock farming and processing. In this setup, Arkalyk is being given back a role it already performed half a century ago: serving as the urban center of a large rural territory.

Arkalyk’s history is often told as the drama of a single enterprise: the city emerged around bauxite deposits, the resource base was depleted, and decline followed. That account leaves out much of its economic structure. In the Soviet period, Arkalyk rested on three pillars — the mine, its status as the center of Torgai Region, and its role in serving the surrounding agricultural territory. These generated different streams of employment and demand, but they were integrated into one system.

The crisis unfolded in stages. Arkalyk lost its functions as a regional center, the economy of the surrounding districts went through the collapse of the former supply and marketing system, and later bauxite mining came to a halt. The city lost several sources of employment and demand at once, which had previously sustained one another.

Today, Arkalyk is being developed on a different economic basis. New roads and the airport are expected to reduce its isolation, agricultural projects to link the city with the economy of the surrounding districts, and processing and services to restore its role as a regional center. The success of this model depends on whether the individual projects come together into a single economic system.

Arkalyk emerged in 1956 as a settlement of geologists and builders near the Amangeldy group of deposits. In 1965, it was granted city status. The Torgai bauxite mining enterprise extracted raw material for the aluminum industry and sent it for further processing in Pavlodar.

This division corresponded to Soviet industrial geography. Extraction was located near the ore, while processing was placed near powerful energy facilities and other links in the industry. Arkalyk received guaranteed demand, jobs and infrastructure, but remained the beginning of the chain. More complex processing stages, engineering centers and a significant share of value added were located in another city.

As long as the integrated system provided orders, tariffs, and transportation, this dependence looked like a reliable form of specialization. Its vulnerability became apparent later. Arkalyk had almost no influence over the market for the final product, the decision to expand processing, or the lifespan of the deposit. However, a single mine would not have been enough to explain the city’s rapid growth in the 1970s and 1980s.

In 1970, Torgai Region was formed from districts of the Kostanay and Tselinograd regions. Its administrative center was established in Arkalyk.

The young industrial city acquired a regional-level administrative apparatus, as well as construction, education, healthcare, culture, transport, and communications. Specialists came to the city, new neighborhoods grew, and enterprises opened.

The administrative reform was driven by an economic objective. Torgai covered a vast and heterogeneous territory. The northern and eastern districts were tied to grain farming and virgin-land state farms, while the arid south and west relied on pasture-based livestock farming. The districts needed supplies, machinery repair, veterinary services, construction, workforce training, processing, and a decision-making center.

Arkalyk linked these functions. The city had a grain elevator, a meat-processing plant, a dairy plant and a poultry farm, as well as transport and repair enterprises and construction organizations. Light and food industries expanded employment beyond the mine. Educational institutions trained personnel for schools, farms, and regional institutions. The airport and roads supported movement across a territory where distance itself was an economic barrier.

Status as a regional capital became part of the economy, not just a level of administration. Budget investment created urban demand; rural districts supplied raw materials and came to the city for services; Arkalyk processed part of the output and supplied the region with specialists, goods, and administrative capacity. The city helped turn sparse rural settlement into a connected economic system.

Arkalyk’s three pillars reinforced one another. The mine provided stable industrial employment and rail freight. Regional institutions brought in budget funds, specialists, and construction. Agriculture expanded the city’s market beyond its administrative boundaries: harvests, livestock, and the needs of state farms created work for processing, transport, and repairs. That is why the city was larger than a single bauxite pit would have allowed.

For Arkalyk, status as a regional capital was part of its economic base. Budget spending, construction contracts, and flows of specialists and residents from surrounding districts passed through the city. The abolition of Torgai Region in 1988 therefore meant much more than a reduction in the administrative apparatus.

The decision was consistent with the logic of late-Soviet administrative consolidation. Torgai Region had a low population density, an agricultural specialization, and depended on large-scale state investment. Maintaining a separate regional center could have seemed an excessive expense.

However, the region had not yet suffered an economic collapse. As early as 1989, residents formed a committee to restore Torgai Region, and in August 1990 the leadership of the Kazakh SSR reinstated it within its previous borders.

But the restored region had already entered a different economic reality. After the collapse of the USSR, former state procurement, crediting of state farms, and interregional supplies came to an end. Agriculture lost its familiar supply and sales system, and processing enterprises lost raw materials and orders. The weakening of the economy reduced the incomes of the population and the budget, while regional status could no longer replace the production ties that were breaking down.

In 1997, Kazakhstan consolidated its administrative regions, reducing their number from 19 to 14. For Arkalyk, this decision was an additional blow. Along with the regional institutions, the city lost steady demand for transport, trade, construction, and services. Flows of people, budget funds, and administrative decisions began to be redirected to other regional centers. Arkalyk retained its buildings, utility networks, and trained personnel, but lost its role as a hub linking the city with the surrounding districts. The city’s economy began to contract faster than the infrastructure built to support it.

The Torgai bauxite mining enterprise continued operating for another two decades. That is why the mine’s eventual closure became the most visible symbol of the crisis. In fact, it marked the end of a process that had begun much earlier. The number of employees declined as the deposits were worked out: about 900 in 2014, 793 by the end of 2017, 681 at the beginning of 2020, and roughly 500 by August of that same year. In March 2021, the enterprise effectively shut down.

By that time, Arkalyk had already lost a significant share of its population. According to the 1989 census, Arkalyk had 62,367 residents. In May 2022, 38,449 people lived within the territory administered by the city, including 25,511 in Arkalyk itself. The reporting boundaries differ, but the direction of change is clear: the urban system had become much larger than the economy and population available to sustain it.

In the early 2000s, some residents were relocated from the emptied microdistricts in order to shorten the length of the utility networks that had to be maintained and to stabilize public utilities. This was a form of managed contraction — a solution familiar to many shrinking industrial cities around the world.

Kazakhstan is developing a more direct road between the central and western regions. The Center–West corridor will pass through Arkalyk and Torgai to Irgiz and shorten the distance between Astana and Irgiz by 573 kilometers. A territory that had been outside the main flows now has a chance to become part of a long transport axis.

For the state, this is both a transport and a regional-development task. The road opens access to agricultural land and pastures, facilitates the transport of livestock and goods, and lowers supply costs. The airport restores fast links with the capital and the regional center. The Arkalyk–Shubarkol railway had already ended the station’s dead-end status. Together, these routes weaken Torgai’s basic constraint — its distance from markets and services.

Arkalyk was chosen as a hub because of the urban capital accumulated there. Housing, utility networks, education, healthcare, cultural institutions, and transport infrastructure built for a regional center already exist. Building a comparable hub from scratch would cost more. In this case, revival means putting assets that survived the former administrative system back to productive use.

Arkalyk’s revival makes sense because one road is not enough. Transit can pass through a territory without leaving much behind. For transport flows to turn into regional development, there needs to be a city where processing, warehousing, repair, education, healthcare, public services, and housing for specialists are concentrated. Arkalyk already has part of this infrastructure and has historically played that role.

In January 2026, the Government of Kazakhstan approved the comprehensive development plan for Arkalyk, Amangeldy District, and Zhangeldy District for 2026–2028. It includes 51 measures across ten areas, with a total cost of 165.5 billion tenge.

The economic logic of integrating the city and rural districts is most evident in agricultural projects. In Arkalyk, plans call for establishing a cattle breeding center, a sheep-breeding complex and a feedlot, building a gelatin plant, expanding the poultry farm, and launching compound feed production. These enterprises cover several links in a single economy, from feed and livestock production to raw-material processing. The surrounding districts can provide farms and a raw-material base, while Arkalyk can concentrate processing, logistics, and production services.

Roads, the airport and utility infrastructure form the second part of this framework. The Arkalyk—Zhezkazgan road is meant to facilitate the shipment of goods, the airport to improve transport connectivity, and the upgrading of the urban environment and social facilities to make Arkalyk an attractive location for businesses and specialists. These investments acquire economic significance if they help the city serve not only its own residents, but also the surrounding rural territory.

However, bringing these projects together still does not create a regional economy. Livestock complexes may purchase feed and services outside Torgai, district farms may sell raw materials bypassing Arkalyk, and the new road may merely speed up transit. Therefore, the result should be measured not by the number of facilities built, but by the links between them: how much local raw material is processed in Arkalyk, how many orders farms and entrepreneurs in the region receive, whether logistics and production services emerge here, and whether finished products reach external markets. This is precisely what will determine whether Arkalyk regains its role as Torgai’s economic center.

Arkalyk is not being restored to its Soviet-era state. A new Torgai Region is not being created, the bauxite mine is not being reopened, and the population will not return to its former level in the coming years.

Instead, the state is trying to assemble a new functional equivalent of the lost system. Transport links the territory to markets, agricultural projects generate a flow of goods, and the city concentrates processing, human resources, and services.

This approach differs from the usual rescue of a single-industry town through a new anchor plant. Its core unit is the nexus of “city — rural area — transport corridor.” The success of one element depends on the others. Without a strong local economy in the districts, Arkalyk has nothing to process or provide services for. Without an urban center, rural projects incur higher costs. Without access to external markets, the entire system remains too small.

By 2028, the results will be visible in several indicators: steady capacity utilization at new enterprises, procurement of raw materials and services within the region, growth in non-resource employment, regular passenger and freight flows, the city’s own revenues, and the number of graduates who find jobs there. Demographics are especially important. A slowdown in outmigration will say more about the future than the volume of investment spending.

The first regular flight after a long interruption gives this story a powerful symbol, but not yet a conclusion. Arkalyk will return to the country’s economic space when the surrounding districts once again turn to it for processing, expertise, services, and access to markets. In that case, its role as the center of Torgai will become the basis of the city’s economic life, while the mine will remain an important part of its history.