The company Harsco from the USA is going to invest EUR 20 million, in association with the London-based company Clarendon, in the construction of a modern plant in Bor, which will be extracting copper from goaf, the waste material deposited during century-long mining works in this area.
Mitch Bulajic, CEO of Clarendon International, confirmed this news for Novosti daily.
– An agreement on the construction of a plant that will employ 60 workers should be inked early next year – says Bulajic.
– Depending on the results, the investment will later reach the value of EUR 50 million, and maybe even grow to as much as EUR 100 million.
Novosti cites Bulajic as saying that the plant will be built on the grounds of the Mining-Smelter Basin (RTB) Bor, and that raw materials will be supplied from the goaf areas of the Bor-based company.
– We expect to be able to produce about 3,000 tonnes of copper per year for a start. Of course, the production capacity will grow in time. Ecology represents a special aspect since our production will be utilizing the waste material depositing on the grounds of RTB Bor for almost a century – Bulajic explains.
The estimates are that there are about 350 million tonnes of goaf at RTB Bor’s mine dumps. Using the latest technology and the procedure that is up to 35% cheaper than the standard method of copper production, nearly 200,000 tonnes of the purest red metal could be extracted from that goaf.
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U.S. Harsco is one of the world’s leading companies engaged in, among the rest, alternative ways of producing metals. The company’s biggest partner in Serbia is Smederevo-based U.S. Steel. Harsco achieved a turnover of USD 2.5 billion in the first nine months of this year.
