Hardly a week before Eidul Azha with a series of mine explosions of ‘south ore body’ in district Chaghi, the Saindak copper and gold project entered a ‘concentration’ stage of copper metallurgy. In other words, the project has gone into partial production, at last.
Usually, extraction of copper from its sulphide ore involves six stages: 1) crushing; 2) concentration 3); roasting 4) smelting; 5) bessemerization; and 6) refining. Big blocks of copper are crushed and finally powdered. Generally, the concentration of powdered is carried out by froth flotation process, in which ore is mixed with water in a tank containing a small quantity of pine oil. The entire mixture is agitated by blowing in air. The ore is wetted by oil and rises to the surface from where it is skimmed off. The froth is filtered to get concentrated ore. The concentrated ore is then passed through other stages and finally the extracted copper is refined through a refinery.
Earlier, there was a need for establishing a refinery at Saindak. The option to use the facility of Iranian refinery was open which was to prove economical as it was across the border. The Chinese, however, decided later to establish a refinery with the investment of $30 million which will separate gold from copper and will directly market in the world metal market.
With blasting of mines on February 6, the widespread apprehensions among the people about the sustainability and completion of this project have been removed.
The Saindak copper and gold project is an example of sheer incompetence, financial mismanagement and administrative mishandling of planners and economic managers in Islamabad. The project was originally estimated at Rs6 billion has crossed the figure of Rs14 billion and took more than 16 years to be completed.
A Chinese company, Metallurgical Construction Corporation (MCC), acquired the project on lease for a period of ten years last year in September. Pakistan and China signed a formal contract worth $350 million for the development of the project. According to the contract, the Chinese company will pay $500,000 monthly to Pakistan over next 10 years plus 50 per cent of the total revenue from mineral sale. Balochistan will also receive $0.7 million per year as royalty.
Though the project was completed in 1995, due to financial constraint, the government was unable to provide working capital and thus abruptly closed it down. During the four months trial period, it produced 1500 tones of copper, 6000 ounces of gold and 12000 ounces of silver. The federal government could not arrange funds for launching the project and the debt burden on the project went on rising resulting in its closure. A large number of its employees lost their jobs.
It is worth mentioning that the Chinese are pioneer in transferring technology in metal mining, mainly in copper. They will face no problem since they built the whole plant. They are committed to train Pakistanis by offering them on-job training facilities.
The Benazir government closed down the project after completing a trial production of 34 days, which fetched Rs200 million in foreign exchange.
The Saindak project has the capability of producing 15,810 tons of blister copper, 1.46 tons of gold, three tons of Silver for a period of 20 years. The project will have far reaching impact on the country’s economic progress and will contribute significantly towards improvement of socio-economic life of the people in Balochistan. It would generate many jobs for the local youth and would help combat backwardness in the province.
The MCC which is engaged in developing the project has estimated 20,000 tons of copper production in first year, which may reach 250,000 tons within five years. The project is expected to start production in May next year.
Saindak assets were formally handed over to the MCC on March 22 last year. Some 50 Chinese experts were already at the project who started repair and maintenance work. The chief of the MCC, Mr. Sun, expects production of blister copper by May 2003. It is estimated that the project would produce 20,000 tones of blister copper containing about 1.5 tones of gold annually.
The MCC is committed to replace Chinese experts by Pakistanis gradually and re-employ the 700 ex-employees who had lost their jobs due to the closure of this project. The company is investing $350 million and according to an estimate the project will generate annual revenue of about $65 million. Besides, it will create 1,288 direct and 11,000 indirect jobs.
