At a major tungsten ore deposit located in the Enbekshikazakh district of the Almaty region, infrastructure construction is in full swing. The contractor, China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC), has announced that the mining and processing plant will be operational by the end of 2024, as reported by Kazakhstan Today.
Construction at the site began in May 2022. Zhang Shan Bai, the chief project engineer from CCECC, noted that a significant portion of the work involved installing a 2 km conveyor belt. The unique feature of the ore transportation system is that after preliminary screening, the raw material will be conveyed through an underground tunnel for further processing. This is a pioneering project in Kazakhstan for drilling and constructing a conveyor belt within a mountain massif.
CCECC specialists assembled the crushing plant in six months. The future beneficiation plant will have a capacity of 10,000 tons of ore per day. The Boguta deposit aims to extract 3.3 million tons of ore annually. It is projected that once operational, the mining and processing complex will contribute over 10% of the global tungsten concentrate production. In the second phase, the operator will begin producing ammonium paratungstate and processing tungsten carbide powder.
Last year, it was reported that the Boguta project was named “Zhetisu Wolfram.” The Chinese investor, Jiaxin International Resources Investment Ltd., has pledged to invest $450 million into the enterprise.
