An agreement between Sotkamo Silver and ABB Oy, Finland, has been signed for engineering, design, delivery as a turnkey package of electrification, automation and instrumentation. ABB will also provide Sotkamo Silver with a financing package of €5 million to cover the delivery. ABB will supply a range of electrification and automation solutions for the concentrator plant and the mining operations. This contract follows a previous order in 2012 for the construction of a 20 km long power transmission line and substations.
“ABB’s vast mining industry experience, project competence and comprehensive technologies will help this new plant operate at its most productive and efficient from the very beginning,” says Account Manager Hannu Luhtaniemi from ABB.
“The signing of this agreement is an important milestone for Sotkamo Silver, and enables a construction and engineering start-up of the silver mine. It is even an important and first step in financing package, which we are currently working with,” explained Dr Timo Lindborg, CEO of Sotkamo Silver AB.
On April 16, Sotkamo Silver was granted the environmental permit by the Finnish Regional State Administrative Agency. Taivaljärvi is the largest silver deposit ever discovered in Finland. Sotkamo Silver plans to produce about 30,000 kg or 1 Moz/y of silver.
The mining method selected by Wardell Armstrong International (WAI) is transversal bench and fill stoping with cemented rockfill (CRF). The sublevel interval is 20 m, the stope and pillar widths are 10 m and the length equals to the ore width within cutoff limits. Mining is to start from the base of reserves and proceed upwards.
The Taivaljärvi orebody crops out and part of it is amenable to conventional open-pit mining. The open pit ore reserve according to the study is: 201,000 t @ 93.2 g/t Ag. The remainder of the 3.0 Mt ore reserves are underground reserves.
The WAI study assumes the mining to begin from the underground mine and the open pit will not be taken into production until the third year after startup.