Aug 30 2005
The North-Ural Bauxite Mine (SUBR), a part of SUAL Group, has launched Novo-Kalinskaya Mine – the first mine to be built in Russia in the post-Soviet era and one of the biggest projects of this type. SUAL Group has invested RUR 1.5 billion in the project.
The Novo-Kalinskaya Mine was designed to achieve two main goals: to maintain SUBR's bauxite-mining capacities and to employ the miners that have been working in exhausted mines no. 15-15 bis and 16-16 bis. The annual bauxite output of the older mines was 800,000 tonnes. The Novo-Kalinskaya Mine will gradually approach this level. By the end of 2005, the Novo-Kalinskaya Mine will have extracted 170,000 tonnes of bauxite.
The construction of Novo-Kalinskaya started in 1970. At the end of the 1980s, construction was frozen because of lack of funds and the mine was temporarily closed. The construction effort was renewed after SUBR became incorporated into SUAL Group.
The mine has 27-kilometre mine tunnels, three vertical shafts with a diameter of 7 metres and a depth of 1400 metres, an 84-metre tower on the skip shaft, a bauxite warehouse, a 2-kilometre railroad and a waste water facility with a capacity of 500 cubic metres per hour.
‘Launching Novo-Kalinskaya Mine is a unique event for the entire Russian mining and processing industry,' said SUAL Holding President Brian Gilbertson. ‘This is an important step forward in strengthening SUAL Group's position as a integrated company that is fully balanced in terms of raw materials and production.'
‘It is vital for any ore-extracting business to construct new capacities as the old ones are exhausted. The Novo-Kalinskaya Mine will allow SUBR to maintain its output at current levels for decades,' said OAO North-Ural Bauxite Mine General Director Victor Radko.
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