YEREVAN, MARCH 27, ARMENPRESS: The Armenian Copper Program (ACP), a company running copper and molybdenum mines in Armenia’s northern region of Alaverdi, has pledged to invest $295 million in the next 28 years in new mines in Teghut, which experts estimate have the second biggest deposits of copper and molybdenum.
A joint Canadian-Armenian study has revealed that the Teghut mines have around 450 million tons of ore. This is a three-stage program. The first stage is to last 7 years and see $125 million of investments, in the second five-year-long stage the company will invest $85 million and another $85 million will be invested in the last 14-year-long stage. In 28 years the company is supposed to extract and process 21 million tons of ore annually.
Every stage of the investment program is expected to surge copper production 3-4 times. The production surge is supposed to result in turn in GDP rise from 2.7 percent in the first phase up to 5.5 percent in the last one. The company has also pledged to plant 127,000 trees in nearby 600 hectares of land in the next 25 years.
Armenia’s metallurgical enterprises reported last year a 33 percent rise in aggregate output to about 130 billion drams ($290 million), attributed by trade and economic development ministry experts to strong global demand in non-ferrous metals and the privatization of the country’s largest mining plant- the Zangezur Copper and Molybdenum Combine at $132 million in December 2004 by a consortium of local and foreign investors led by German’s Cronimet metals group. Cronimet has pledged to invest an additional $157 million by 2008.
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