Chelyabinsk Electrometallurgical Combine (ChEMK), Russia's biggest ferroalloy producer, plans to boost chrome ore production by one-third this year to 800,000 tonnes, Timofei Surin, head of mining at UralSibCom, a management company that is part of the ChEMK industrial group, told Interfax.

Surin said that an additional 2.3 million tonnes of ore could be mined at an open pit at the Tsentralnoye or Central field in the Rai-Iz intrusion in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District, and that the mine's capacity would be raised to 800,000 tonnes annually in 2006. The company will then be able to carry on mining chrome ore by the open-pit method for another 2-2.5 years, he said.

These plans are subject to approval in the first quarter, Surin said.

The company has started to build a concentrating plant to process the additional ore mined at the Tsentralnoye field, and plans to bring this on stream by the end of 2006, Surin said. The plant will have capacity for 500,000 tonnes of ore, because "by our estimates around 300,000 tonnes will hardly need any treatment at all," Surin said.

Efforts are under way to increase chrome ore reserves at other fields in the Rai-Iz intrusion seeing as mine production at Tsentralnoye is expected to decline by 2009. Reserves of the Yuzhnoye or Southern field will be appraised this year. It is thought at this stage that Yuzhnoye's reserves can be increased to 3 million tonnes. The company hopes to have the reserves listed in the first half of 2007.

The company has also applied to adjust its license in order to increase chromium ore production to 900,000 tonnes from 600,000 tonnes annually.

ChEMK owns 80% of Kongor-Khrom, which has been mining the Tsentyralnoye field since 2003. Yamal Mining Company owns the other 20%. Kongor-Khrom mined 600,000 tonnes of ore in 2005.

Manganese ore mining

ChEMK in 2006 plans to temporarily mothball the Parnokskoye manganese ore deposit in the Komi Republic until results are in from additional exploration work. Surin said preliminary figures show the deposit will would be mothballed for three to five years.

He said the exploration on the basis of which a license was issued to develop the deposit was conducted on restricted sections, and the reserves were entered in the state balance without being classified by type.

Trials conducted last year showed that mass processing of the ore at the Chelyabinsk Electrometallurgical Combine would not make economic sense using existing technology, Surin said.

Additional exploration will be begun in 2006 to get more exact reserve figures and to classify reserves by technological type, he said. He could not specify the timetable and cost of the additional work.