A decade in China building factories and running cross-border operations. Then back to Kyrgyzstan to lead one of the country's largest gold mines. As Chairman of Makmal Gold Company — the sole employer in a remote mountain region — the job was turning seven years of losses into profit while keeping 700 families employed. Five languages. Three continents of experience. Now consulting on mining operations, international trade, and organizational turnarounds across Central Asia.
Operational turnarounds, supply chain optimization, and production efficiency for gold and non-ferrous mining. Experience at scale — 700 employees, multi-million dollar budgets, remote high-altitude sites in Kyrgyzstan.
Ten years in China, fluent Mandarin, and a network built on factory floors. Sourcing, manufacturing partnerships, and cross-border logistics between China and the former Soviet region.
Board-level advisory for state-owned and private resource companies. Practical experience chairing a board through a turnaround, testifying before Parliament, and managing the politics of being a region's sole employer.
Arrived in Xi'an at 18 with no Mandarin and not much else. A year of language school — memorizing characters, university canteen, figuring out bus routes. By the transfer to Hangzhou, business conversations in Chinese were possible. At 22, Promplast Equipment: sourcing injection molds for Russian factories. Manufacturing learned on factory floors, not in classrooms. By 25, managing cross-border logistics between Hangzhou and Tula.
Four years of running operations by instinct called for frameworks. A Master's program at Zhejiang Gongshang University, alongside managing a pump factory's China operations. The thesis explored ethical leadership — how a leader's personality shapes whether employees help each other or undermine the work. Not abstract. Both outcomes had been visible on factory floors.
The last year in China — working for a roller blinds manufacturer, coordinating production for a Swedish parent company, managing the booth at FORMEX in Stockholm. A different world from molds and pumps: consumer goods, European standards, Scandinavian clients who documented everything. Then home to Bishkek and a legal services company. Two years of figuring out what came next.
GL Makmal Developing: building a metallurgical plant in Jalal-Abad. Two hundred employees, multi-million dollar budgets, equipment arriving from China — and the need for someone who could talk to everyone involved. Testimony before Parliament followed. Then an antimony processing plant in Batken, near the Tajik border. That project taught a different lesson: not everything gets built, and knowing when to stop matters as much as knowing how to start.
Entered Makmal Gold Company as a translator. Within a year — board member. By 2023 — Chairman. The mine had bled money for seven straight years, 200 million som in the red. Also the only employer in a remote mountain region, meaning closure would kill a town. The fix: cut waste, overhaul procurement, push authority down to the people doing the actual work, and step aside. Result — over 400 million som in profit. Seven hundred families kept their income.
Left Makmal in April 2024. Published a first academic paper on sustainable gold production. Now consulting — helping mining companies across the region with the same problems that took years to solve: broken supply chains, outdated equipment, organizations that forgot how to function.
Logistics (MDPI), Vol. 9, Issue 3, Article 100 · with Mohammad Shamsuddoha, Tasnuba Nasir
1st International Social Sciences Graduate Student Congress, Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University