Usoke Upgrades
The Company’s Usoke processing facility is located in Lubumbashi, approximately 10km from the Etoile mine. The Usoke plant is the Company’s primary processing facility, with existing installed capacity to produce 24,000 tonnes of Copper cathode and 2,400 tonnes of Cobalt carbonate per annum.
A series of improvements have been worked on in the last year 2010 to improve throughput/plant capacity and reduce operating costs. These include:
Planned/improved in 2011:
- Pre-Leach concentration system was commissioned in August 2011 to increase throughput (by increading raffinate recycling), reduce limestone consumption and improve the plant's water balance.
- Additional CCD thickners for post leach solid liquid separation and Cu SX split circuit is under construction. This will increase soluble metal recovery, plant throughput, plant efficiency and capacity to 30,000tpa Cu cathodes.
- Effluent treatment plant to treat tailings to meet environmental requirements is under design stage.
- Additional ball mill grinding circuit to supplement existing grinding mill to meet increased plant throughput and handle different types of ore is at conceptual stage.
- Extension of Cu EW cells to meet higher Cu Cathode production when high grade concentrate is available from concentration (flotation) plant raising capacity to 40,000 Cu cathodes tpa by end 2013.
To date, the Company has invested $400 million into the Usoke processing plant. Along with the plant improvements the feed end is also being worked on to ensure uninterupted supply to Usoke plant.