Konkola copper mine will start hoisting Zambia’s deepest ore

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LesCrozes

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Message Lun 15 Oct 2012 14:03

Konkola copper mine will start hoisting Zambia’s deepest ore

Konkola copper mine will start hoisting Zambia’s deepest ore by end of month
October 15, 2012 - 12:30 GMT Location: Konkola

Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) expects to commission the underground crusher at its Konkola Deep Mine Project (KDMP) in Zambia by the end of the month.

The development is part of the company’s $1bn investment project, begun in 2006, to exploit the high-grade 200 million tonne Konkola Deep orebody. As well as helping to boost KCM’s overall copper output from 200,000 tpy to 400,000 tpy, KDMP will also extend mine life at Konkola to 25 years. The project was on the drawing board for more than 30 years but previous owners were reluctant to invest in such a massive undertaking. KCM has sunk four new shafts as part of the investment – three for ventilation and one for ore hoisting. Ore hoisting has already begun from the mid-level, at 1,000 metres, but the new No 4 shaft goes down to 1,505 metres, the deepest shaft ever sunk in...
Ce que l'on conçoit bien, s'énonce clairement, Et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément. BOILEAU
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Laf1986

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Inscription: Jeu 30 Juil 2009 19:54

Message Lun 15 Oct 2012 17:06

Re: Konkola copper mine will start hoisting Zambia’s deepest

Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) expects to commission the underground crusher at its Konkola Deep Mine Project (KDMP) in Zambia by the end of the month.
The development is part of the company’s $1bn investment project, begun in 2006, to exploit the high-grade 200 million tonne Konkola Deep orebody.

As well as helping to boost KCM’s overall copper output from 200,000 tpy to 400,000 tpy, KDMP will also extend mine life at Konkola to 25 years. The project was on the drawing board for more than 30 years but previous owners were reluctant to invest in such a massive undertaking.

KCM has sunk four new shafts as part of the investment – three for ventilation and one for ore hoisting.

Ore hoisting has already begun from the mid-level, at 1,000 metres, but the new No 4 shaft goes down to 1,505 metres, the deepest shaft ever sunk in Zambia. The plan is to extract some 7.5 million tpy of ore, yielding 210,000 tonnes of contained copper.

As part of the build-up to full mine commission, KCM is also expanding its water pumping capacity. Konkola is one of the wettest mines in the world and will need to pump out 350,000 cu metres of water per day. Pumping equipment is operational at the 500-900-metre level but needs to cope down to the 1,505-metre level.

The new concentrator at Konkola, commissioned earlier this year has a SAG and a ball mill each capable of treating 3 million tpy of ore. This equipment has removed the need for the washing plant and secondary and tertiary crushing used in the old concentrator, now on care and maintenance.

Recoveries in the concentrator are 89%, yielding a 30-35% copper concentrate. Ore grades in the Konkola Deep orebody range from 3.5% to 2.7% Cu, tailing away to about 2.4% at its north end, which is being developed under a separate concession by a joint venture of Vale and African Rainbow Minerals.

Given the need for continuous pumping of water, and the sometimes unreliable energy supply from the national grid, KCM’s investment at Konkola also includes a new diesel 24MW back-up power plant costing about $35m, which has proved its worth on a couple of occasions, when grid supply failed. A new backfill plant has also been installed to accommodate the ore production increase.

Since KCM moved into Zambia in 2004, it has invested $2.5bn in its Copperbelt operations.

A new 311,000-tpy smelter was commissioned at the Nchanga division in Chingola two years ago. This state-of-the-art direct-to-blister flash smelter is one of only three such smelters in the world. Copper anode from Nchanga is sent to the company’s Nkana refinery at Kitwe – the old Nkana smelter having been closed. A second cobalt furnace was installed at Nchanga earlier this year to increase cobalt recoveries – cobalt is recovered as a Co-Cu-Fe alloy which is sold to specialist refiners.

Currently, about 40% of the the Nchanga smelter throughput is tolling concentrate from First Quantum Minerals’ Kansanshi mine and also from Barrick’s Lumwana mine. FQM is developing its own smelter but KCM is confident it will have sufficient feed from its own operations to replace the Kansanshi concentrate.

Other projects that will help to boost copper production include creating access to the upper orebody at the Nchanga underground mine as reserves in the lower orebody become exhausted. The two levels are separated by a sandstone layer.

The company is also going ahead with its 20,000-50,000-tpy refractory ore (CRO) project in mid-2013, and further ahead, is contemplating moving underground at the Chingola and Fitwaola open pits at Nchanga.

KCM is Zambia’s biggest private sector employer, with over 9,000 employees and 12,000 contractors.
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Laf1986

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Inscription: Jeu 30 Juil 2009 19:54

Message Lun 15 Oct 2012 22:57

Re: Konkola copper mine will start hoisting Zambia’s deepest

article en ligne au dessus

cette mine va devenir monstrueuse
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mbury

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Inscription: Sam 19 Sep 2009 09:49

Localisation: Nord de l'Alsace, dans le Parc Régional des Vosges du nord

Message Mar 16 Oct 2012 01:20

Re: Konkola copper mine will start hoisting Zambia’s deepest

Effectivement, Laf,
Lors des comptes 2013 de Vedanta, nous aurons déjà une part K Deep dans la production de cuivre, sur presque 6 mois, puisque, à priori, K Deep sortira du minerai d'ici qqs jours. Les coûts unitaires baisseront, les volumes augmenteront progressivement, et des bénéfices très importants devraient être au RDV.
Patience, ...encore un peu.
Si Vedanta veut trs mettre KCM en bourse, ce sera qqs temps après cette mise en route de K Deep: c'est la meilleure stratégie pour obtenir une bonne valorisation.
Bonne soirée MB

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