Ecuador kickstarts copper mining financed by Chinese consortium

Updated: July 23, 2019 Source: Xinhua News Agency
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Ecuador has for the first time ventured into industrial-scale mining with the launch of Mirador, an open-pit copper mine financed and operated by a Chinese consortium.

High-level private- and public-sector officials, as well as local community leaders, attended Mirador's production launching ceremony this week.

The mine occupies 2,995 hectares in southeast Zamora-Chinchipe province.

"Today, industrial mining officially begins in Ecuador. This is a historic and fundamental day for the consolidation of mining and the country's development," said Carlos Perez, Ecuadorian minister of Energy and Nonrenewable Natural Resources.

The opening of Mirador production will drive regional development and benefit the surrounding communities, he said.

Ecuador's biggest mining operation to date is run by EcuaCorriente (ECSA), a joint venture by China Railway Construction Corporation Limited (CRCC) and Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group Holdings Co. Ltd.

With China's cooperation, "Ecuador is for the first time producing copper and turning into an exporter of minerals on an industrial scale," Perez said.

For the first six months of the production phase, huge mills will process 10,000 tons of mined material per day at a massive beneficiation plant built with state-of-the-art machineries and technologies.

Beneficiation is the process of separating the rocks and residue from the mined material to get a higher-grade product (concentrate).

Eventually, the plant will process up to 60,000 tons of material a day, according to ECSA's Vice President of Legal Affairs, Mauricio Nunez.

"After extracting the mineral rock, it undergoes a secondary macerating process at the beneficiation plant with the help of two mills ... the resulting (copper) dust is put through a flotation process" to achieve an increasingly concentrated product, Nunez said.

The processed material will then be transported by land to the southwest Ecuadorian port of Guayaquil for shipment to copper refining plants in China.

The ECSA has invested some 1.248 billion U.S. dollars in the project to date, and contributed 85 million dollars in royalties, which are going to fund social development initiatives in the region.

In addition, Mirador, a good example of Ecuadorian-Chinese cooperation, has helped spur the local economy and generated 2,400 direct jobs.

CRCC vice president Li Ning said that the consortium has also participated in several infrastructure projects in the province, including building a bridge, roads leading to and from the mine, a collection channel for mine waste and a hospital, among others.

"The company (ECSA) successfully concluded the opening of the mine and is going to begin exploitation on a large scale," Li said.

"We consider the start of production (of copper concentrate) as the departure point for making greater contributions to the social development of Ecuador," Li added.

According to the Ecuadorian government, Mirador will generate up to 7.635 billion dollars in taxes, revenue and royalties for the state over its life span.

Editor: 曹家宁