Uzbekistan, Tashkent, November 15, /Trend, D. Azizov /
The Tashkent district-based Almalyk ore and mining enterprise in 2013 will start implementing $45 million-worth project of processing off-balance ores extracted from mine Kalmakyr, a spokesperson for the enterprise told Trend on Tuesday.
The project that assumes processing of off-balance ores from mine Kalmakyr will allow increasing copper production by 2-3 percent in the near-term future.
Following the implementation of the project, raw material processing capacity of the enterprise will increase by 4 million tons by 2016 at the expense of use of additional raw materials.
The project will be financed at the price of own assets of the enterprise.
As reported before, the enterprise currently completes a $98.7 million-worth project of reconstruction and expansion of mine Kalmakyr - the enterprise's key raw material base.
Mine Kalmakyr located at the site of copper-porphyritic mine of the same name has been in operation since 1954. Its annual designed capacity is 27 million tons of ore, with the volume of overburden operations of 12 million cubic meters per year. The mine's geological reserves, as of January 1, 2007, were estimated at 6.15 million tons of copper, and 98,400 tons of molybdenum. Apart from copper, the industrial value of mine Kalmakyr comprises gold, silver, molybdenum, selenium, tellurium, and rhenium.
Ore production is expected to increase by 3.5 million tons per annum as a result of reconstruction works at the mine.
The project is financed at the price of $63 million as a loan of the Fund for Reconstruction and Development of Uzbekistan, $20 million as loans of local commercial banks, and $15.7 million as own assets of the ore and mining enterprise.