Top10 Tungsten Mine Projects Outside China I: Bakuta Tungsten Mine

The Bakuta Tungsten Mine (Boguty) is located in the east of Almaty central city in Kazakhstan, 150 km away from Horgos Port of China's largest port in Xinjiang. The mine is a world-class super large opencast mine and one of the top ten tungsten mine projects outside China. It was developed by former Soviet experts in the late 1960s. The discovered and proven reserves are about 270,000 tons.

Bakuta Tungsten ore has no restrictions in production and sales, so this project has a great competitive advantage. It is a large-scale open-pit mine with ore reserves of about 285,000 tons and production capacity up to 3.3-6.5 million tons per year. The construction period of one of the top ten tungsten mine projects outside China, Bakuta Tungsten mine is about 2 years. If this project is putting into the Chinese A-share capital market after put into production, there will be billions of valuations.

The mine exploration data are well kept intact and stored in the Archives of Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources in Kazakhstan. At present, Bakuta Tungsten Mine has proven ore reserves of 126.029 million tons, average tungsten trioxide grade of 0.226%, and tungsten trioxide reserves of 284,900 tons, ranking fifth in the world.

The Bakuta Tungsten Mine is a medium-grade quartz vein mine. Its ore body is relatively thick and concentrated. The ore is buried relatively shallow, and the surface is exposed locally. The associated metals in the deposit include gold, silver, bismuth, molybdenum, etc. Due to the low annual average temperature in the mining area, conventional beneficiation reagents have poor low temperature resistance, weak collection capacity, low recovery rate, and high reagent consumption.

On April 25 last year, at the second "Belt and Road" Summit Forum Entrepreneurs Conference, Jiangxi Copper Group signed an agreement to invest in the Bakutat open-pit tungsten project. The project was included in the list of key projects for China-Kazakhstan capacity cooperation and has received great attention from the governments of both countries.

It is understood that the total investment of the project outside China is about 1.8922 billion yuan, or about 270 million US dollars (converted at 7.01:1), and the construction period is 2 years. Among them, the construction cost of an open pit, beneficiation plant, waste rock yard, office building, etc. is 145.724 million yuan, other costs for land, survey, design and other engineering construction are 177.18 million yuan, engineering reserve cost is 98.07 million yuan, and interest during the construction period is 53.17 million yuan. The Chinese investment totaled US$24.46 million, including the company's own funds of US$26.46 million, and China Merchants Bank Nanchang Branch provided a loan of US$216 million.

The Bakuta Tungsten Mine is one of the top ten tungsten mine projects outside China. It will start construction in the third quarter of 2020. After completion in 2022, the initial annual production scale will be 3.3 million tons of ore, 15,000 tons of 65-degree tungsten concentrate, and the mine's service life is 29 years. It is currently the world's largest single tungsten mine under construction.

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