Uzbekistan, Tashkent, April 25 / Trend D.Azizov /
The State Committee on Geology and Mineral Resources (Goskomgeo) of Uzbekistan and Korean Shindong Resources Co. (Shandong) plan to create a joint venture for the construction of a mining and processing plant at the Sautbay tungsten deposit worth $145 million in the near future, Shindong's general manager Shin Yang Woo said at the 6th Tashkent International Investment Financial Forum.
The joint venture will be created on a parity basis, and a memorandum on its establishment may be signed by the end of May.
Partners intend to start the construction of the plant with design capacity of 1.5 million tons of highly enriched tungsten concentrate in 2014.
Development of bankable feasibility study of the project is currently under development and will be completed by the end of 2013.
Along with the Sautbay deposit, the resource base of the joint venture will include two adjacent sites - Sagynkan and Burgut, where it is planned to conduct exploration work for tungsten.
According to the source, construction of the mining and processing plant is planned to be conducted in parallel with the opening of the Sautbay deposit. The project will be funded through loans from international financial institutions and investment by the joint venture's co-founders.
As previously reported, in August 2011, Uzbek Goskomgeo and Shindong signed an agreement on establishment of the Uzbekistan-Korea Tungsten joint venture for exploration and development of the Sautbay tungsten deposit. However, the founding documents of the joint venture have not yet been signed.
The explored reserves on the Sautbay deposit have hit four million tons of ore containing tungsten trioxide to the aggregate of 19,900 tons.
A program for the development of the country's mineral resources base of tungsten deposits for the next six years was developed in Uzbekistan in 2006.
The program included, in particular, the construction in 2007-2008 of a mining and processing complex with the development of the north site of the Yakhton field in the Samarkand region. The start of its development was scheduled for 2009 with annual production of tungsten concentrate in the amount of 870 tons.
It was assumed that as a result of the program's implementation, full capacity utilization of UzKTZhM would be provided for the production of tungsten products in 2014.
However, the program was not undertaken due to technical reasons.
In 2012, production of tungsten metal by the Uzbek plant of refractory and heat-resistant metals (UzKTZhM, Chirchik city of the Tashkent region) increased by 2.8 times to 130.8 tons compared to 2011.