Red Metal Group Ltd intends to begin developing the Aksoran lead deposit in the Shet district of the Karaganda Region. Mining is planned to be open-pit, with exploration starting in 2027 and actual extraction in 2028. Reserves are estimated at 229,700 tonnes of lead, infohub.kz reports.
Before mining begins, the company will conduct additional geological exploration to clarify the deposit's structure, the location of ore bodies, and engineering-geological and hydrogeological conditions. It plans to drill 118 exploration wells. Wells that will not be used further will be plugged and abandoned after work is completed. According to the mining plan, exploration will take about two years.
Aksoran is to be developed with two open pits — North and South. The designed mining depth will be up to 350 m. The operation's output will be gradually increased from approximately 450,000 to 1.65 million tonnes of ore per year. The mine life is estimated at 18 years. The extracted ore will be sent to an existing processing plant, possibly Nova Zinc.
According to the mining plan, the Aksoran deposit was discovered in 1931. Its exploration was carried out in the 1940s–1950s. In 1953, reserves in categories C1 and C2 were estimated at 26.3 million tonnes of ore and 301,300 tonnes of lead.
In the modern assessment of lead and zinc mineralization, the following figures are given. Total lead resources are estimated at 20.45 million tonnes of mineralized mass with an average lead grade of 1.12%. This is approximately 229,700 tonnes of lead. For zinc, the mineralized mass is estimated at 5.95 million tonnes, containing about 44,700 tonnes of zinc at an average grade of 0.75%.
For open-pit mining, lower figures have been identified. Lead resources amount to about 159,700 tonnes in 12.7 million tonnes of ore at an average grade of 1.26%.
Red Metal Group Ltd is registered in the AIFC. Its owners are Vostok Minerals (no such company is registered in Kazakhstan, but a legal entity with that name exists in Russia) and Minerals Operating, whose owners are Alexander Kim and Alibek Shakirimov.
Earlier it was reported that Fonet Er-Tai AK Mining, co-owned by former Kazphosphate head Maksutbek Yesenov, plans to build a new open pit at the Ayak-Kodzhan copper deposit in the Pavlodar Region.