According to preliminary data, the IFI of the mining industry at the end of 2023 will be 98.4%.
In monetary terms, this means that enterprises in the region’s mining sector produced less products by at least 9.6 billion tenge in 2023, reports inbusiness.kz.
“The failure to achieve the IFO is due to the geopolitical situation, which affected the production volumes of the largest enterprise in this industry, SSGPO JSC. The company’s share in the industry is about 52%. At the end of 2023, 5.2 million tons of marketable concentrate were produced here, with a decrease of 0.9% by 2022, as well as 4.5 million tons of pellets, with a decrease in volumes of 13.6% compared to 2022,” noted the manager Regional Department of Entrepreneurship and Industrial-Innovative Development Nazarbek Konkabaev.
According to the regional akimat, the enterprise was able to sell significantly more finished products. The company is increasing exports to China (Bagansky and Dzhugansky metallurgical plants) and is working to increase supplies to the domestic market (Karaganda metallurgical plant). In 2023, the Rudny enterprise sold one million tons more pellets than it produced. 3.2 out of 5.5 million tons of this type of product were shipped to China.
Sales volumes of iron ore concentrate are slightly higher than production volumes – literally by a couple of hundred tons. Sales volumes are literally 100 thousand tons more than in 2022 – 5.4 million tons according to data announced in the relevant department. The situation is not getting worse, but sales volumes are still almost half lower than in 2021, when SSGPO sold almost 9 million tons of iron concentrate.
This was achieved, according to the company, by improving production technology, which made it possible to increase the iron content in the concentrate from 66 to 68%. This cost the company 5.4 billion tenge. But the update has so far affected only three of the 14 production sections. Only 20% of concentrate production volumes are produced with a high iron content.
The company is also trying to improve its situation by launching new processing units. In particular, we are talking about plans to build a plant for the production of hot briquetted iron. The declared capacity is 4 million tons of finished products per year with an iron content of more than 90%. The cost of the project will exceed 900 billion tenge. Plans to implement this project were first discussed back in 2016. By the beginning of 2024, the ERG group, which includes SSGPO JSC, according to the akimat of the Kostanay region, has already developed an action plan for the implementation of the project, is selecting a technology supplier, and has begun developing a feasibility study and design estimates.
