Kazzinc plans to extract hundreds of thousands of tons of zinc and tons of gold at a new deposit in eastern Kazakhstan

The Kazzinc company (controlled by the Swiss company Glencore) plans to begin developing the Chekmar polymetallic deposit in the Glubokovsky district of the East Kazakhstan region and extract tons of gold and silver, as well as hundreds of thousands of tons of zinc.
“The mining plan for the development of the Chekmar deposit includes the extraction of polymetallic ores using an open-pit mining method. The production ore is planned to be transported directly from the quarry to the processing plant in the city of Ridder,” the information published for the planned public hearings.
The Ridder Mining and Processing Plant of Kazzinc operates on the reserves of the Ridder-Sokolnoye, Tishinskoye and Shubinskoye deposits and carries out the extraction and processing of polymetallic ores with a complete cycle of mining and metallurgical production. The ore mined in the quarry will be delivered by dump trucks to the processing plant of the GOK, located 46 km from the mining site.
The area of ​​the quarry will be 17.34 hectares, the maximum productivity, which is planned to be achieved in the eighth year of its development, is 900 thousand tons of ore per year. The operational reserves of the deposit are 12.1 million tons, which are expected to be worked out over 17 years, starting in 2032.
In particular, the quarry productivity in 2032 will be 300.8 thousand tons; in 2033 – 448.5 thousand tons; In 2034 – 600.2 thousand tons; In 2035–2038 – 600 thousand tons each; In 2039–2046 – 900 thousand tons; In 2047 – 600 thousand tons; In 2048 – 563.7 thousand tons. The metal content in the ore will be: zinc – 2.01%, lead – 0.81%, copper – 0.44%, gold – 16.7 grams per ton, silver – 0.34 grams per ton. Thus, over the entire period, the company plans to mine 254,377 thousand tons of zinc, 98.1 thousand tons of lead, 52.3 thousand tons of copper, 202.29 tons of gold and 4.1 tons of silver. The work will be carried out by Volvo excavators, Shantui bulldozers, XCMG quarry dump trucks and other equipment.
All the facilities designed for the deposit are located on a land plot of 475.2 hectares, the rights to which the company has until May 10, 2027 (with the right to extend).
The so-called off-balance or poor, substandard ore will be stored in a warehouse near the quarry. Its annual volumes will gradually decrease from 15.2 thousand tons in 2032 to 0.8 thousand tons in 2048.
Kazzinc is one of the largest non-ferrous metallurgy enterprises in Kazakhstan, performing a full cycle of work on the production of zinc, lead, copper, gold and silver ingots, from ore mining to the release of refined metal. In particular, the company is the largest gold producer in the republic.
The enterprise includes five plants. The company’s headquarters are located in Ust-Kamenogorsk. The main participant in the company is the Swiss trader Glencore (ranked 21st in the Fortune Global 500 ranking of the world’s largest companies) – 70.2%. The remaining share (29.8%) belongs to the national company Tau-Ken Samruk (a subsidiary of Samruk-Kazyna). According to Glencore’s annual report, zinc production at Kazzinc increased in 2023 by 27.5 thousand tons – to 173.9 thousand tons, while lead production amounted to 35.6 thousand tons, copper – 14.8 thousand tons, gold – 598 thousand ounces