Baku, Azerbaijan, July 26
By Fikret Dolukhanov – Trend:
IFG Capital Partners, headquartered in Luxembourg, may start developing the Yakhton tungsten deposit in the Samarkand region of Uzbekistan, the company's press service stated.
To this end, the company will conduct a feasibility study together with the State Committee of Uzbekistan for Geology and Mineral Resources.
In the first phase of the study, IFG Capital Partners intends to conduct drilling to confirm existing reserves and to carry out metallurgical tests to determine the optimal ore processing scenario.
After that, the company plans to design a processing facility.
The Yakhton tungsten deposit is located near the city of Urgut. The volume of reserves of tungsten trioxide in this field is estimated at over 20,000 tons.
IFG Capital Partners emphasizes that the Yakhton deposit will be the first step in creation of a tungsten cluster in Uzbekistan through consolidation of a number of separate marginal fields.
Chairman of the State Committee of Uzbekistan for Geology and Mineral Resources Bobir Islamov, in turn, underlined that tungsten industry has been considered an “unused pearl” in Uzbekistan for a long time.
"This agreement will give impetus to the development of this industry," he said.
Managing Partner of IFG and IFG Metals and Mining Olga Ponkratova said the company is pleased to participate in revival of the tungsten industry of Uzbekistan. According to her, the company plans to help the country become a world producer of tungsten.
Tungsten is a brilliant light gray metal having the highest proven melting and boiling points. Tungsten is one of the heaviest, hardest and most refractory metals. In its pure form it is a silvery-white metal, similar to platinum, which can be easily forged and pulled into a thin thread at a temperature of about 1,600 degrees Celsius. The metal has a high stability in a vacuum.
The largest reserves of tungsten are located in Kazakhstan, China, Canada and the USA. There are also deposits in Bolivia, Portugal, Russia, Uzbekistan and South Korea. The world production of tungsten is 49,000-50,000 tons per year. The main exporters of tungsten are China, South Korea and Austria.
The mineral and raw material resources of Uzbekistan are estimated at a value of $5.7 trillion.
Just over $1 trillion of them is the cost of the already explored reserves and the prepared deposits. At the same time, only 20 percent of the territory of Uzbekistan has been studied, and accordingly, there is a huge potential for discovering new deposits.
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