Russian miner Petropavlovsk launching second refractory gold processing facility

Petropavlovsk is a major integrated Russian gold producer with JORC Resources of 19.50Moz Au which include Reserves of 7.16Moz Au. The company’s key operating mines Pioneer, Malomir and Albyn, and its pressure oxidation – POX hub at Pokrovskiy are located in the Amur Region in the Russian Far East. Petropavlovsk has produced a total of c.8.3Moz of gold since operations began in 1994.

Petropavlovsk announced the technical launch of the Pioneer flotation plant, the company’s second facility for processing refractory gold ore and producing flotation concentrate. The company said that the new Pioneer flotation plant has the capacity to process 3.6Mtpa of refractory gold ore. Once fully operational, the plant is expected to deliver more than 100ktpa of refractory gold concentrate for treatment at the company’s POX hub.

Pioneer flotation doubles the group’s capacity to process refractory gold ore which, including the existing Malomir flotation plant, now stands at 7.2Mtpa. The plant is expected to become fully operational by July and to produce c.60kt of concentrate in 2021.

The company added that the construction of a third line at the Malomir flotation plant remains on track and will add an additional 1.8Mtpa of flotation capacity from Q3 2022, bringing the total combined group capacity to 9.0Mtpa. The launch of Pioneer flotation and expansion at Malomir will reduce the reliance of the POX hub on treating lower-margin 3rd-party concentrates. The company noted that the new plant will enable Petropavlovsk to take full advantage of Pioneer’s substantial refractory ore reserves while providing an additional source of own-mined concentrate for our state-of-the-art POX hub.

Source: kitco.com