UMMC launched mining at Shemur deposit

On Saturday, July 10th, the Governor of the Sverdlovsk oblast, Alexander Misharin, and General Director of Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, Andrey Kozitsyn, gave start to copper ore mining at the Shemur deposit, which is located to the North of the Sverdlovsk oblast 40 km from the town of Ivdel.

The beginning of extraction in reality means that the workers of copper-zinc mine “Severnoye” being a part of JSC “Svyatogor” (metallurgical complex of UMMC) have stripped over 2 mln m3 of rock.

Having pushed the button of an explosive device in the observation site Alexander Misharin, the Governor, triggered an explosion that became a symbolic milestone of new mine. The observation platform was arranged at the board of the quarry of 750 x 600 m in size. They laid in the quarry 18 t of explosives to make the blast. When the first Shemur copper ore emerged, the attended representatives of regional authorities and UMMC employees greeted it with applause.

‘We have witnessed a very important event’, stated Alexander Misharin, the Governor of the Sverdlovsk oblast, during the briefing at the board of the quarry, - ‘they have begun mining at one of the quarries of the deposit, which development is expected to last 25 years. We created a quarter-century labour perspective! Here at the end point where the rail way comes, the exploration of the North Ural starts. The exploration itself means creation of new jobs. I have in view not only those 100 jobs that are organized here, but in the long run the processing, refining and fabrication of extracted ore into the non-ferrous finished products need to involve dozen of thousands of citizens of the Sverdlovsk oblast. Let me underline that here they have arranged comfort life conditions for people who work under a rotation system, used the most advanced machinery for extraction works, applied state-of-the-art foreign and domestic technologies. It’s very essential that mining is performed with care of future generations – profound cleaning systems, and land filling processes’.

Andrey Kozitsyn, General Director of UMMC, said that annually 500 kt of copper ore would be explored at the Shemur pit. They are planning to reach the design capacity in the next year. For primary processing of ore they will construct a crushing and grading complex. Extracted ore will be delivered by trucks to the rail way station Ivdel-1 and then by rail road to the Krasnouralsky copper smelter (JSC “Svyatogor”), where it will be converted to the blister copper.

UMMC contributed over 1 bln roubles to the exploration of the Shemur deposit. The total investment portfolio of the company will make up 1.6 bln USD this year, 70 % of this amount will be directed to the development of raw material base in the Republic of Bashkortostan, Orenburg oblast, Altai and Sverdlovsk oblast. In the mean time in the North of the Sverdlovsk oblast near Shemur they will start development of the Novo-Shemur pit, which reserves in ore are estimated as 21.1 mln t (copper – 350 kt, zinc – 468 kt). It is expected to develop the deposit during 25 years.

Note

The Shemur quarry belongs to the Severny group of deposits including Tarnyer, Novo-Shemur (both – copper ore) and the Third Severny (iron ore). Ore reserves of the Shemur pit makes up 5.1 mln t. The deposit primarily contains copper ore and copper content is 1.71%. Zinc reserves are not significant. Overall copper reserves of Shemur equal to 86.7 kt. By the way Shemur if translated from Mansi language means “Sleeping hill”.