Outotec has been awarded a contract by Guangxi Jinchuan Non-Ferrous Metals for the design and delivery of a greenfield copper production plant to be built in the Fangchenggang port area near Bei Hai in Southern China. The contract value exceeds €30 million. Outotec’s scope of delivery includes operating licenses for both Outotec® Flash Smelting and Kennecott-Outotec Flash Converting technologies, basic engineering and delivery of proprietary equipment for smelting and converting, anode casting shop as well as spare parts. In the first phase, the annual capacity of the smelter will be 400,000 t of cathode copper and it is expected to be commissioned in early 2013.

Outotec® Flash Smelting combined with Kennecott-Outotec® Flash Converting is the cleanest copper smelting method available. Outotec® Flash Smelting Process makes use of the reaction heat of concentrate and no external fuel is needed. Owing to low volume of process gas and sealed equipment, a total of 99.9 % of the sulfur can be captured. Even the discard slag from the process is in stable form and used in road construction or in other land-filling applications causing no environmental burden.

“This is the third major Flash Smelting project announced by Outotec this year and also third Flash Converting technology delivery to China. This deal shows the high level of trust the market has for the Outotec smelting technologies and signifies the importance of the environmental and sustainability aspects. This order from the demanding Chinese market also proves the customer’s confidence in Outotec’s global experience in the smelter technology design, engineering and delivery of key equipment”, says Outotec’s CEO Pertti Korhonen.