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Kazakhaltyn reduces commercial output 41% in 11 mths
(Interfax News Agency)KOKSHETAU. Dec 27 (Interfax) - Kazakhaltyn Mining and Metals Concern (Kazakhaltyn MMC) reduced commercial output 40.7% year-on-year in January-November from 2.904 billion tenge to 1.721 billion tenge, a spokesman for the head of the Akmola regional administration told Interfax.
Kazakhaltyn, whose parent company KazakhGold recently floated 25% of its shares on the London Stock Exchange, produced 428 kg of gold in heavy concentrate, down from 763.9 kg a year previously, and 8,000 tonnes of flotation concentrate, compared with 30,200 tonnes.
The company did, though, produce its first 211.3 kg of Dore gold.
The company has said the drop in output is temporary and
thatoutput will increase as new and effective technologies are implemented.
Kazakhaltyn completed four major modernization projects at a cost of $35 million in 2005, and plans to carry out two more in 2006.
The company has launched two gold recovery plants: Aksu with capacity to process 1 million tonnes of ore per year, and Zholymbet with capacity for 520,000 tonnes. The two plants, the first in Kazakhstan to use sorption cyanidation technology, are expected to produce respectively 1.5 tonnes and 1.7 tonnes of gold in Dore alloy annually.
In August the company launched two heap leaching complexes at the Aksu and Bestobe mines with annual capacity of respectively 500,000 tonnes and 1 million tonnes.
The projects, which were begun in 2004, were financed with a bond issue and loans from Kazakh commercial banks.
The projects will enable the company to move away from selling illiquid flotation concentrate, where gold content is 30-90 g/t. The new technology will also enable it to process decades of flotation tailings with gold content of 1-1.2 g/t, and produce base bullion in Dore bars. The company plans to gradually increase the proportion of Dore gold in total gold production.
In 2006, Kazakhaltyn plans to build a gold recovery plant at the Bestobe mine and a heap leaching complex at Zholymbet. The company is not disclosing the details of the projects yet, but plans to begin them in the near future.
With the completion of the four projects, production of gold products will total 2.8 tonnes in 2005, and is expected to grow to 8.5 tonnes in 2006 following the completion of the next two projects. The company expects to produce 600 kg of heavy concentrate, 900 kg of gold in concentrates, and about 7 tonnes of Dore gold in 2006, compared to respectively 500 kg, 600 kg and 1.7 tonnes in 2005.
Kazakhaltyn produced 952 kg of gold in heavy concentrate and 44,000 tonnes of flotation concentrate in 2004, respectively 10% less and 2% more than in the previous year. Ore production grew 5% to 670,000 tonnes.
The exchange rate was 133.51 tenge/$1 on December 26.
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