Pakistan for the first time in its history becomes an exporter in the metal market with the export of 1000 tons blister copper produced by the Saindak Copper-Gold Project in Balochistan.
According to official sources, world demand for electrical/electrolytic grade copper is booming, and Pakistan can be a big source of this metal for the growing economies of Asia through the 21st Century. The copper deposits in Pakistan at Reqo Diq and Saindak are likely to transform the face of the mining industry in Pakistan, they added.
The Saindak project, starting commercial production in August 2005, in the two months produced 1,000 tons blister copper.
Sources said that the Saindak facility may be able to export around 16,000 tons blister copper within a year, of which the Balochistan government would get two percent royalty from the total production valued at London Metals Exchange (LME).
It is estimated that total export earnings from Saindak copper would be around $45 million per annum. In Tethyan Cooper Company's case, by the time the first production of copper is ready for export, it would have taken over 15 years from its inception to reach that stage.
One of its main industrial usages is the production of cable, wire and electrical products for both electrical and building industries. Demand for copper is high and world inventories are significantly diminishing.
Besides Saindak, very large reserves (over 837 million tons) of copper ores bearing gold, silver, and molybdenum have been identified in the Chaghai volcanic belt (Tethyan Magmatic Arc), which extends from Pakistan through Iran into Turkey. Other major metallic mineral reserves include 74 million tons (MT) of aluminium bauxite, laterite, lead-zinc (46 MT), and iron ores (600 MT).
Large reserves of non-metallic minerals are gypsum (300 MT), clays (134 MT), barite (30 MT), and phosphates (22 MT), besides raw material used in cement production.
Pakistan also has reasonable reserves of other metallic minerals such as uranium, zirconium, titanium, chromium, and vanadium. Of the 92 known minerals in the country, 58 are commercially exploited, with an annual production of 14 million tons (MMT). Major minerals/raw materials imported are iron ores, cooking coal, and phosphate rocks.
It is speculated that if discoveries at Reko Diq keep emerging at the present rate, Pakistan may well be home to an ores body equivalent to Chile's fabulous Escondida deposits and emerge among the top five copper producers in the world.