Kazakhstan intends to revive the tungsten industry. This was announced by the Chief Executive of JSC NMC Tau-Ken Samruk Kanat Kudaibergen during his speech at the World Mining Congress in Astana.
Kazakhstan has huge confirmed reserves of tungsten – a rare and highly demanded metal. The formation of the tungsten industry in the Republic began in the 70s of the last century. But the implementation of projects related to the extraction of tungstenwas stopped in 1993 due to a number of objective economic and political reasons.
In total, 12 deposits have been explored in the country at the moment, their total reserves are estimated at more than 2 million tons of tungsten trioxide. The largest and most promising deposits are the Upper Kairaktinskoye deposit and the North Katpar deposit (Karaganda region), located 20 kilometers from it. The total reserves for these two deposits are estimated at about 1 million 300 thousand tons of tungsten. Taking into account the total reserves of North Katpar and Upper Kairaktinskoye, Kazakhstan will become the owner of the dominant share of world resources of tungsten.
Upper Kairaktinskoye deposit
The total design capacity of the Upper Kairaktinskoye and North Katpar is more than 12,500 tons of ammonium paratungstate (PVA). Accordingly, after reaching the designed capacity of these deposits, Kazakhstan will take the second place in the world in terms of production of tungsten products.
At the moment, additional research is being carried out at the fields of Upper Kairaktinskoye and North Katpar, ore mining technologies are being developed, improved and tested. Formation of the transport and energy infrastructure is also in progress.
According to Kanat Kudaibergen, the tungsten mining at the Upper Kairaktinskoye and North Katpar deposits will make Kazakhstan one of the main participants of the world tungsten market.