Ulaanbaatar/MONTSAME/. The development of heavy industry and production of value-added products are prioritized in the Government's Action Plan for 2020-2024. In this context, Minister of Mining and Heavy Industry G. Yondon got acquainted with production and sales of mining outputs and operations at Tumurtolgoi and Tumurtei mines of ‘Darkhan Metallurgical Plant’ JSC last week.

Tumurtolgoi mine was initially estimated to have a reserve of 25 million tons in 1963, but it will be reduced to 11.9 million tons according to the exploration in 2017. Although the

reserve is lowered, additional exploration is planned to be carried out, said authorities of the company. Due to the high sulfur content of the ore extracted from the mine, the technology needs to be improved. For about Tumurtei deposit, it has a reserve of 229 million tons and is capable of extracting 5 million tons a year. It commissioned a dry magnetic concentrator plant in 2014. In the last six years, the two mines have stripped 28 million cubic meters of soil and extracted 11 million tons of ore. The Darkhan Metallurgical Plant has produced 10,000 tons of cast and 1 million tons of steel balls.

The company is implementing a ‘Project to build a mining and metallurgical complex’. According to the plan, the project was scheduled to be completed in 2019. However, the goal of processing iron ore to produce final products has been abandoned and it has turned into a company that exports without deep processing, warned the Minister.

Within the framework of the project to build the complex, it has spent a total of MNT630 billion on construction. For instance, dry magnetic concentrator plant have been commissioned at the two mines alongside the opening of a wet concentrator plant with a capacity of processing one million tons of iron ore at Tumurtei. Moreover, loading and unloading terminals with each capacity of 2 million tons were built and 95 km paved road has been put into operation in Darkhan-Uul and Selenge aimags within the concession agreements.

N. Enkhchuluun, Deputy Director of Operations/Steel Production, DMP said that the government should control the scrap metal market, which is a raw material for the steel industry, and this is one of the things needed to further develop ‘Mining and metallurgical complex’.

“Annually, about 70,000 tons of scrap metal is generated in the domestic market. Although the scrap metal is abundant, small Chinese-invested steel mills buy a ton of scrap metal at higher price, which inflates the price of the market. It becomes a main reason for reducing the competitiveness of the industry and increasing the cost of production.”

The Minister expressed his agreement with an issue that small steel mills that produce substandard reinforcement should be controlled. He said, “But whoever produces low-cost and high-quality products has to be promoted according to the nature of market” and gave assignments DMP authorities to fulfill their obligations under the concession.

Published Date:2020-09-07