A giant potash fertilizer plant in Northwest China's Qinghai Province is expected to start production on August 1, setting six national records in construction.

The plant is located at Qairhan Salt Lake, which covers over 5,000 square kilometers on the southern edge of the Qaidam Basin. The lake has verified reserves of 145 million tons of potassium chloride, accounting for 97 percent of the nation's total.

The plant has an annual production capacity of one million tons, the highest in China.

In addition, the project has the country's largest salt retrieval shipping fleet with 11 vessels, two of which were imported from the United States.

It also has the country's three largest concentration machines each with a diameter of 48 meters, the ten largest potash crystallization machines each 16 meters high and 12.2 meters across, the 12 largest horizontal band filters with a single-row filtering area of 67 square meters and the largest flotation machine with a single-trough content of 44 cubic meters.

The project is of significance to China's drive to speed up the development of western regions. It has taken three years to complete, at an estimated cost of about two billion yuan (US$240 million).

Qinghai is rich in natural resources. The total salt reserves in its Qaidam Basin are estimated at 60 billion tons.