The Russian mining and steel producing company Mechel has announced the commissioning of a new mining and processing plant at the Voskhod chrome ore deposit in the Aktubinsk region in Kazakhstan.
The Voskhod deposit holds 19.5 million mt of proven reserves of high grade rich chrome ore. Once the plant reaches its designed capacity, the annual mining output will total 1.3 million mt of chrome ore, which will be used to produce 950,000 mt of chrome concentrate. One third of this volume will be shipped for ferroalloy production to Mechel's Tikhvin Ferroalloy Smelting Plant while the remaining volume will be sold in the Russian domestic and international markets.
The cost of the constructed mining and processing plant totaled $250 million. The annual sales of the project will be worth approximately $500 million.