A delegation from the Soviet Union visited Vancouver in early March to discuss mining industry opportunities that are becoming available in that country because of economic reforms under perestroika. International Coast Minerals (VSE), already involved in a proposed tailings project with a state-run mining company in Poland, hosted the 5-man delegation led by Victor Smirnov, head of the International Department for the Ministry of Non- Ferrous Metals in Moscow.
Other members of the delegation included officials from the Middle-Ural Copper Plant in Sverdlovsk, which signed a letter of agreement with International Coast for the development of a tailings project in the USSR, similar to the one in Poland.
The initial program will involve testing one of the tailings ponds that is estimated to contain 17 million tonnes containing average grades of 0.3% copper, 0.44% zinc, 27.8% sulphur, 10.8 grams silver and 0.72 grams gold per tonne, along with some platinum group metals. The historic mining district in the central Urals contains about 350 million tonnes of tailings from a number of metallurgically complex copper-zinc deposits.
International Coast has started with metallurgical tests and plans to complete a prefeasibility study for the first-phase project in several months. If results are positive, officials of the company plan to visit the mine site in Sverdlovsk to formalize a joint venture agreement. At the same time, International Coast is proceeding to complete a final feasibility study for the Polish tailings project.
Smirnov told The Northern Miner that the tailings project represents a new agenda in the Soviet Union to encourage joint ventures or other business arrangements that will enable the mining industry to integrate new technology to increase recoveries and efficiencies and to upgrade environmental protection.
“Projects like this would have been impossible 10 years ago but we are able to negotiate with less bureaucracy today,” Smirnov said through an interpreter, adding that a number of other mining-related joint venture or business agreements involving foreign capital have been or are being negotiated.
A multi-industry delegation from the Soviet Union also visited Globe ’90, an international conference held in Vancouver in mid-March. It identified business opportunities that will result in the implementation of practical solutions to global environmental challenges.
Be the first to comment on "International Coast hosts Soviet delegation"