“Chaarat” mine in Syunik is of great importance both for the Kapan community and for the entire republic as an important factor of economic and social investments. Armhanq spoke with Davit Tovmasyan, general director of “Chaarat Kapan” company, about the operation of the mine.
What does the company represent?–
“Chaarat” is an international organization that has two main mines in Kapan and Kyrgyzstan. The last one under the development stage, it has been explored, the reserves are approved, we are waiting for investments to build the processing plant. We export two types of concentrate. The first is gold copper, where gold is predominant. The second is zinc concentrate, which also contains gold and silver.
Who were the first beneficiaries of the mine?
– The city of Kapan was created right around the mine. Once there was a small village here. The mine has a history of about 200 years. Mining work was started by the French, continued by the Greeks, and gradually they developed it. They started with smelters, went to see where there was a rich vein, mined, smelted and got copper.
Then technologies developed, they built a processing plant, produced concentrates, sent them outside the country, and based on this, the city began to expand, labor force was required.
What role does the company play for the Kapan community?
Today our company is the largest employer in the community, we have about 1000 employees, as well as about 500 contractors, together about 1500 employees.
Our largest investment project is the Eastern Flank, where we have already started exploration drilling. As a miner, I believe that one cannot live only in a mine, there must be diversification, tourism and agriculture should develop. We support a number of business projects, for example, we create sewing factories in the villages, we give orders, we provide them with jobs so that their business grows.
Having social programs, we cooperate with the municipality. We learn about community problems and help, support the solution. In general, much in this city was historically built by the company. We built and equipped a kindergarten in Kapan. We also provide property to other kindergartens in the community.
We renovated the infectious disease hospital, the female consultation department. We bought garbage trucks for the community; we support them with literally everything.
And what environmental projects are you implementing, what is this part of your activity?
– The most important thing is that we work in a closed system, which is of the greatest importance in the world. Our emissions circulate in terms of water, the tails flow to the tailings, where they settle, and we reuse the purified water. Thus, our emissions are closed, we can say that they do not exist. We have no external emissions; the water is returned to the processing plant.
We are implementing a very large project in terms of environmental sustainability: we will strengthen the tailings dam. Taking into account the developments in the world related to tailings, to ensure additional safety of the Geghanush tailings dam, operated by the company, and to avoid possible problems, the company is developing a project to ensure the stability of the dam.
We also involved the international consulting company SRK in these works. About five and more million dollars will be invested in this project. This is an additional cost, but it is done for our peace of mind. After that, we will perform land reclamation and greening, and the area will become very green, safe, flat and beautiful and absolutely will not leave the impression of a tailings dam. We also have other programs: we are working with banks to provide loans for the implementation of green technologies. We plan to install solar panels.
We also want to replace our diesel vehicles with electric ones, which will bring great environmental benefits: there will be no smoke. We have this experience. One of our battery-powered machines has been converted to an electric one with our own efforts.
Being a closed mine, a lot of electricity is consumed on ventilation, but with electric vehicles there will be no such problems.
What are you doing to mitigate the damage in the face of a falling dollar exchange rate?
– Due to the fluctuations of the dollar-dram exchange rate, we have suffered and continue to suffer very large losses. That is why our next big plan is to take the tails back to the mine. When we remove the ore from the mine, holes appear there. We will fill those holes with tails.
This practice is accepted all over the world, there are special concentrators that condense the tailings, dehydrate them to the point that the pumps can carry them, then a little cement is mixed and filled into the holes. There it solidifies.
In this way, we ensure both the stability of the mine and the capacity of the tailings dam.