President Shavkat Mirziyoyev attended the launch of the fourth copper concentrator plant project of the Almalyk Mining and Metallurgical Plant on Tuesday.
During the ceremony, the president pressed a symbolic button and launched the construction of the new plant.
The $5.3 billion project is expected to create units to manufacture 146 thousand tons of copper cathode, 13 tons of gold and 73 tons of silver per year. The annual production volume is planned to increase to $1.9 billion. More than 3,000 people will work at the plant and its infrastructure facilities.
The Italian company Wood and the British Worley Parsons have been involved in the project and are envisaged to use high-tech, eco-friendly and cost-effective technologies.
Reportedly, the 5th copper concentrator plant of the AMMC (MOF-5) is currently being designed.
“I will give you one figure for the Almalyk Mining and Metallurgical Plant. When we started in 2016, when we discovered the Yoshlik-1 deposit, [copper production] was about 70 thousand tons. We have plans to increase it to 160 thousand tons by the end of the year. Large copper enterprises are MOF-1, MOF-3, MOF-4 and MOF-5. In the future, we want to increase [copper production] to 500 thousand. Imagine what it will be like if we bring it to 500 thousand,” the president said on October 14 at the launch of a number of investment projects. In 2023, AMMC produced 148 thousand tons of copper.
In December 2021, Shavkat Mirziyoyev reported that, taking into account the reserves, he gave an order to build copper processing plants No. 4 and No. 5.
The area of the Yoshlik-1 deposit is 11 thousand hectares. Its reserves are also significant - 65 million tons of ore per year. This deposit contains 13 types of valuable and rare metals, such as gold, copper, silver, molybdenum, selenium.
"When we began the study, we discovered 16 million [tons] of reserves. If the reserves [of gold] at the Navoi MMC do not exceed 3,000 tons, then here they are more than 5,000 tons," the head of state said.
Recall that in 2023, AMMC produced 148 thousand tons of copper, more than 17 tons of gold, 162 tons of silver. $ 1.1 billion in investments were mastered, products worth $ 662 million were exported.
