UMMC commissioned a new copper electrolysis shop

29.02.2012 — News

SVERDLOVSK REGION.

Uralelectromed, OJSC (a member of the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company (UMMC)) has launched the first stage of the new copper electrolysis shop. The annual output of the new facility will reach 150 thousand tons of cathode copper. The amount of investment exceeded 4.4 billion rubles; the payback period of the project is expected to be 7-8 years.

The conceptual design of the new shop was developed in 2006 by OUTOTEC, a Finnish company, which also supplied an automated production control system. The crane facilities were manufactured by KUNZ, an Austrian company, and the polymer-concrete electrolytic cells were manufactured by CTI, a Belgian company.

Mark Shuklin, the deputy head of the Uralelectromed technological department, has told RusBusinessNews that due to the new technology (the copper plates in electrolytic cells were replaced with permanent stainless steel cathodes) the recovered copper output will increase from 81 to 83.5%. The cost of cathode copper electrolysis, which today is 800 US dollars per 1 ton, will go down approximately by 10%.

The new facility put into operation paves the way for gradual shutdown of the old electrolysis facilities that produced 380 thousand tons of cathode copper in 2011. Andrei Kozitsyn, General Director of the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, says that at the end of 2014 the company will embark on the construction of the second stage of the electrolysis shop with the estimated output of 150 thousand tons a year and the investment totaling 6 billion rubles. When the third stage is completed, the enterprise will be able to produce up to 500 thousand tons of refined copper a year.