BAKU, Azerbaijan, January 10. Uzbekistan's Almalyk Mining and Metallurgical Combine (AMMC) plans to increase copper production up to 500,000 tons by 2030, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of AMMC Abdulla Khursanov told Trend in an exclusive interview.
“In the medium term, AMMC plans to implement a number of projects to expand the raw material base by developing new deposits of non-ferrous and precious metals in the Tashkent region. These are sites at the Almalyk and Angren ore fields. Prospects of processing of technogenic wastes generated during the whole period of the plant's activity are also being studied. These wastes also contain non-ferrous and precious metals, which can be extracted on the basis of modern technologies. In general, all these promising projects are aimed at achieving the target parameters for copper, gold, and silver production,” he said.
The Chairman of the Board also noted that the AMMC is working on the development of a new copper smelting complex. It is expected that the completion of the complex, which will significantly increase the production capacity of the company, will take place in 2027. The new complex aims to expand the existing copper cathode production capacity from 148,000 tons to 300,000 tons per year.
“The project is being implemented on the territory of the existing complex and is divided into several main facilities: metallurgical and sulfuric acid shop, oxygen block, slag-enrichment plant, concentrate storage and charge preparation, copper electrolysis shop, power supply system of the new plant, and infrastructure,” Khursanov noted.
According to him, today contractors for metallurgical and sulfuric acid shops, oxygen blocks, and internal power supply facilities have already been determined. Contracts have been signed in these areas, and financing has been opened.
“The project is being realized with the active financial support of KfW IPEX Bank and AKA Bank. KfW has assumed the role of organizer of financing, including the creation of a syndicate of banks, which allows effective coordination of international cooperation,” he said.
The chairman of the plant said that within the first stage of the development of the deposit ‘Yoshlik I’ investment project, Almalyk Mining and Metallurgical Combine is completing the construction of copper processing plant No. 3, with an ore processing capacity of 60 million tons per year, as well as its infrastructure facilities.
Abdulla Khursanov also highlighted that one of the most important steps for AMMC is the start of construction of the fourth copper concentrator, which will allow processing another 60 million tons of ore per year and increase the total volume of processing up to 160 million tons. The introduction of new technologies, such as the use of 18.4 MW grinding mills and a tailings thickening system, will significantly reduce operating costs and increase production efficiency. Project solutions also include feeding ore for medium crushing by separate independent lines, eliminating the need to build large feed hoppers; increasing the gravity concentrator cycle feed to 50 percent of the hydrocyclone feed flow, which will increase metal recovery at the initial stages of beneficiation and reduce operating costs at subsequent operations; and building the plant halls in a cascade layout without retaining walls, which will allow gravity to be used to transport pulp through the process.
“To date, the technological regulations have been developed, layouts of the general plan of the plant with the location of the main process shops have been prepared, the development of working documentation for earthwork has begun, and a report on research and development work on ore beneficiation has been developed. The raw material base of MOF-3 and MOF-4 is the Yoshlik I deposit,” he said.
“Digital transformation is one of the priority areas of our work. It is not just the introduction of new technologies, but a global rethinking of the approach to business in order to increase efficiency through optimization and automation of business processes. In 2022-2024, we signed more than 20 cooperation agreements with international companies such as Siemens, SAP (Germany), AVEVA and Datamine (UK), Schneider Electric (France), and many others. As a result, we have realized more than 60 projects,” the Chairman of the Board noted.
He emphasized that AMMC is also actively automating production processes. For example, the installation and launch of 27 strain gauge conveyor scales was completed at the copper processing plant, which increased the accuracy of ore measurement to 99.8 percent. The installation of instrumentation and assembly of control cabinets was carried out at 7 monosections, improving efficiency by 2 percent and reducing reagent consumption by 5 percent. Work was also organized at the smelter to ensure uninterrupted management of systems and instrumentation. The implementation of an automation system at the sulfuric acid warehouse reduced the time of tanker loading by 20 percent.
Abdulla Khursanov emphasized that to further improve efficiency, the combine is also introducing new control systems for transportation activities. For example, using GPS and fuel monitoring for more than 2,000 vehicles, transport operations have been significantly improved, and an automated fuel and lubricant accounting system has been introduced, saving 23,600 tons of diesel fuel between 2022 and 2023.
“We continue to improve our processes. In recent years, the main focus has been on improving our accounting processes and data consolidation. The AMMC is actively developing analytical tools using Big Data technologies and BI systems such as Power BI, which allows us to make management decisions promptly. The company is not going to stop at what has been achieved and sets ambitious goals to bring the coverage of business processes by IT solutions to 98 percent by the end of 2027,” he added.