Dingman pursues Russian joint venture

A small Canadian mining company says it has signed a letter of intent with a Soviet organization to build an autoclave for processing arsenic-rich gold concentrates. Toronto-based Dingman Industries (ASE) plans to build the autoclave next to a stockpile of gold concentrate in the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Soviet Union’s main gold-producer. The joint venture opportunity arose as a result of a 2-year-old ban on processing arsenic-rich concentrates at Soviet smelters. Since the ban was imposed, Glavalmazzoloto, the directorate for precious metals and gemstones of the USSR, has been stockpiling gold concentrate at a rate of 100,000 tons per year. The concentrate contains about 8% arsenic.

“I was in the right place at the right time,” Mark Dingman, president of Dingman Industries, told The Northern Miner during a telephone interview. While the Russians were trying to find alternatives for processing the concentrate, Dingman, a broker and geologist, was looking for opportunities abroad. Frustrated by the competition in North America, Dingman turned to the Soviet Union and found Glavalmazzoloto.

Glavalmazzoloto is a government organization which controls the mining, processing and retailing of precious metals and gemstones within the Soviet Union. It employs about 350,000 people.

Dingman says he can only guess at the environmental problems the Glavalmazzoloto smelter was creating before the banning order, but compares the situation to Sudbury, Ont., before scrubbers and other environmentally friendly technology were introduced. “Whatever we were doing in the 1950s, they (the Soviets) are doing now,” he said.

Lakefield Research and a number of other laboratories are testing a 100-kg sample of Glavalmazzoloto’s arsenic-rich concentrate to determine how well it will respond to the autoclave technique. In theory, the technique will prevent arsenic from escaping in its native form. Instead, the autoclave will combine the arsenic with iron, producing harmless ferric arsenide.

Dingman estimates that the autoclave will take up to 18 months and cost about US$25 million to build. Until the plant is ready, Dingman has agreed to ship the concentrate by rail to a smelter in Western Europe, and is negotiating with smelters in both Sweden and Belgium. In addition to the autoclave contract, Glavalmazzoloto has also agreed to sell Dingman semi- precious gemstones, including pyrope, peridote and zircon, from the Udachny mine in Siberia. Udachny produces 90% of the country’s diamonds.

Dingman hopes to have the agreements, which are subject to approval by Canadian and Soviet authorities, finalized by September.