A press conference on this topic was held on 6 December at the National Press Center of Uzbekistan. The event, organized by the AMMC information service, was attended by the mass media of our country.

The deputy head of department of investments of “Almalyk MMC” JSC Obid Jonsaidov, the deputy director of Copper Concentrating Plant (CCP-3) of project office for implementation of investment project “Development of “Yoshlik I” deposit” Oleg Staroverov spoke in it.

- To date, the Almalyk Mining and Metallurgical Complex implementing at full steam the investment megaproject “Development of the “Yoshlik I” deposit”, says O. Jonsaidov. From the beginning of the open cut project 136.1 million cubic meters of overburden removal (32.0 million cubic meters from the beginning of the year) has been performed, the work was organized in two shifts, involving 1,743 workers and 400 pieces of equipment), 32.1 km (19.7 km from the beginning of the year) of railroad were laid.

The company bought 593 units of mining equipment for amount of USD 415 million (23 drilling rigs, 29 excavators, 54 BelAZ 130-ton and 29 BelAZ 220-ton dump trucks, 80 road-building machines, 12 mixing-charging bulk trucks), as well as 225 pieces of railway equipment for amount of USD 50 million (1 electric locomotive, 5 diesel locomotives, 212 dump cars, 7 road-building machines).

More than 5.6 million cubic meters of excavation work has been done to construct the conveyor ore transportation (“COT-rock”), which will transport 25 million cubic meters of rock per year. In addition, more than 2.5 million cubic meters of excavation work (5.0 million cubic meters in total) were performed to prepare the site for the construction of the conveyor ore transportation (“COT-ore”), which will transport 65 million tons of ore per year to the Copper Concentrating Plant-3.

Excavation work is underway for the construction of substations TP-8, which provides power to conveyor ore transportation equipment, and TP-9 110 kV for railway transport.

Copper Concentrating Plant-3 construction is proceeding at an accelerated pace. To date, 9.8 million cubic meters (74%) of excavation work and 142.0 thousand cubic meters (27%) of concrete work have been completed on the construction site.

“Wood” had developed 5,141 of the 19,236 required specification documents for the project. “UZTM-Kartex” had delivered to the construction site 4 units of large-sized crushing equipment, hydrostatic bearings for 10 mills, 4 sets of cylindrical trommels, installation works are in progress. Currently 2.9 thousand builders and 304 units of special equipment are involved in construction work.

Considerable work is also being done to build infrastructure. In particular, 5.8 million cubic meters (36.8%) of earthworks for the dam foundation and 0.7 million cubic meters (37%) for its bowl have been completed at the tailings management facility. This work involves 93 units of special-purpose machinery.

“UzgeorangmetLITI” Design Institute has developed 227 of the 673 working papers.

In order to construct water supply facilities, land plots (712 hectares) necessary for external water supply facilities CCP-3 (23.5 thousand cubic meters/hour) were allocated, 32 wells (114 in total) were drilled in the underground basin “Karakhitoy”. At present, the company “Uzbekhydrogeology” is carrying out prospecting work to confirm water reserves.

“UzgeorangmetLITI” Institute has developed 490 of the 1,810 working papers.

The joint venture “Uzelektroapparat-Elektroshchit” has fully assembled the metal supports of 10 km length 500 kV transmission lines for the construction of power supply facilities, and 7.5 km of wires have been laid. At the 500 kV substation, construction and installation works are completed for 95% and delivery of major equipment is completed for 97%.

The participants were also informed on the work on the expansion of the copper smelter. For example, in order to supervise the construction of metallurgical complex, a directorate of metallurgical complexes has been set up within the plant, whose staff consists of qualified specialists.

A construction camp for 1,500 persons is being built. Construction work is scheduled to be completed on 25 December this year.

Concrete work on dormitories 4, 5, 9, 10, 11 and 12 is now completed for 85%.

In order to prepare the construction site for the new copper electrolysis shop, which will be built on the site of the copper smelter, 40% of the demolition works have been completed.

Negotiations were held with major technology licensors (“Metso:Outotec” (Germany), “Glencore Technology” (Australia), “Engineering Dobersek” (Germany), “MCC Capital Engineering&Research Incorporation Ltd.” (China), “Xian ShaanGu Power Co., Ltd.” (China), “Avic International Hangzhou Company Limited” (China), “China National Chemical Engineering Sixth Construction Co, Ltd.” (China), “GAZSERF” LLC (Russia and China), “Linde GmbH”, “Linde Engineering” (Germany and UK), “Hugo Peterson” (Germany), “METTOR” (Germany)) on construction of copper smelting units, sulphuric acid and copper electrolysis shops and oxygen stations. Preliminary technical and commercial proposals have been received.

The design and construction work for the expansion of the infrastructure of the new metallurgical complex, as well as the gold and silver refining shop, will be carried out by the complex own resources.

Construction of a new 40,000 tonne sulphuric acid warehouse is nearing to completion (December 2022). In addition, work is underway to dismantle buildings and relocate existing underground utilities, as well as to prepare the construction sites for the start of construction work.

Representatives of the media received answers to their questions.