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President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has directed the National Bank of Uzbekistan to work out financing for a major expansion of the Sulton Tex Group textile cluster in Kashkadarya, setting a one-month deadline for calculations and promising state-backed support to double the company’s capacity. The directive came during a personal visit to the group’s new fabric production and dyeing factory on 21 October, and was reinforced the following day at a regional development meeting.
Speaking to investors after touring the facility, Mirziyoyev framed the cluster in explicitly social terms. “Why do I call this project social? Because it employs so many people,” he said. “To make it a driver project for Kashkadarya, we need a Cabinet of Ministers decision. We will create conditions to double its capacity.” He added that he intended to instruct the National Bank directly and wanted funds allocated to accelerate the process, though no specific sum, interest rate or loan structure was announced.
The company’s founder and head, Nurbek Ergashev, told the president he aims to grow the workforce from its current 8,000 to 30,000 by 2030 and to raise annual export revenues to $150 million. At the 22 October regional meeting, the presidential press service reported a more compressed timeline: 30,000 additional jobs by 2028, with particular emphasis on employment for women. Mirziyoyev also signed a decree conferring on Ergashev the honorary title of Distinguished Entrepreneur of Uzbekistan.
A $54 Million Factory Built Around Resource Efficiency
The facility Mirziyoyev inspected is a new $54 million plant spread across 12 hectares inside the Kashkadarya free economic zone, designed to produce and dye up to 20,000 tonnes of fabric per year and currently employing 840 people. Its most prominent feature is a $3 million closed-loop water recycling system that, according to the presidential press service, recovers and reuses more than 95 percent of process water, saving a claimed 1.1 million cubic metres annually. Mirziyoyev ordered the technology to be replicated across other textile enterprises in the country.
The roof and walls carry 3.5 megawatts of solar panels, an investment the company put at 24 billion soums. A company representative told the president the panels save roughly 10.4 billion soums a year, implying a payback period of just over two years. A gas generator provides backup power. Mirziyoyev said the adoption of resource-saving technologies by “a new generation of entrepreneurs” was lifting Uzbek industry to a new competitive level.
Sulton Tex Group has announced two further investment rounds. A $70 million project within the same free economic zone is planned, expected to create 3,570 jobs. An additional $17 million is earmarked for projects elsewhere in Kashkadarya, projected to employ 1,220 more people.
From Legal Dispute to Presidential Showcase
The trajectory of Sulton Tex Group is not without friction. In 2020, Ergashev sued a group of senior officials — including then-Deputy Prime Minister Uktam Barnoev and then-Agriculture Minister Jamshid Khodjayev, now a vice-premier — alleging that an administrative decision stripping the company of its cotton-textile cluster status was unjustified and caused direct harm. He claimed losses of 10.7 billion soums and said 490 employees lost their jobs as a result. The Karshi district administrative court partially upheld the complaint, finding some local-authority actions unlawful, but the company subsequently lost on appeal.
Khodjayev himself acknowledged at the time that no regulatory framework existed to define the rights and obligations of participants in the cluster model of production. Six years on, that legislative gap has not been filled, even as the government now proposes to expand the same cluster model with National Bank financing and a Cabinet resolution.
The group’s growth since those disputes has been rapid. When Mirziyoyev first visited a Sulton Tex facility in Karshi in December 2018, roughly 300 people worked there on equipment sourced from Switzerland and Japan; in under a year the plant had exported $12 million worth of goods to Poland, Turkey, Iran and Egypt. By October 2023, a newer garment factory built for $8.2 million was shipping to the United States, Canada, Poland, Singapore and Russia, with the full cluster then employing around 3,000 people. A further $7 million factory in Mirishkor district broke ground in May 2025, targeting 500 permanent jobs. The headcount reaching 8,000 by October 2026 represents a near-tripling in three years.