Bravidas vs- department in Gällivare has been commissioned by Boliden to carry out installations of process pipe lines, valves and pumps in the mining process water plants and in a new crushing plant.
Boliden's mine in Aitik just south of Gällivare is Sweden's largest open copper mine. In 2016, approximately 36 million tonnes of ore were enriched in metal concentrates containing copper, gold and silver.
Recently, Boliden decided to invest in a new crushing plant and in improved water treatment in the mining process water plants. Investments are made partly to meet the stringent environmental requirements, partly to enable future production growth in the mine. Bravida has been commissioned to perform the installations of process pipe lines, valves and pumps in the plants.
Tage Lundin, regional manager of Bravidas region, Malmfälten, is very pleased with the confidence which Boliden gives to the Bravida.
- In this type of plant we install high-volume pumps and coarse stainless steel pipes up to 1.2 meters in diameter, which will lead everything from compressed air to process water. It is a complex job, and we are very proud and happy to have received these two assignments. At the same time, we have humble attityde to this task and to the very tough schedule we will work after. These are two very important projects for Boliden, it is important that everything will be done correct.”
The installation work has started immediately and is expected to last until spring 2018. The projects will employ approximately 35 workers from Bravida.
Around 100,000 tonnes a day of waste rock has been removed in Aitik mine near Gällivare since operations began in 2010.
In the Aitik mine itself, the throughput was 18.5t a year since 2006 and 21.9t of waste rock was removed since then. At feed grades of 0.4% for copper, 0.25g per tonne for gold and 2.72g per tonne of silver in 2006, the mine produced 240,000t of copper concentrate. This concentrate contains 66,100t of copper, 35,700kg of silver and 2,340kg of gold.
In 2007, ABB was awarded a $27m contract to supply two 22.5MW gearless drives for the two autogenous grinding mills which were installed during the expansion.
In addition, the company also supplied two sets of megawatt drives for the secondary mills, 650 motors, 230 motor drives and transformers for increased power consumption, a gas-insulated high voltage switch gear, more than 200 low-voltage switchgear units and a harmonic filter system.
To guarantee efficient mining operations, in september 2010 Boliden also awarded a maintenance and service contract to ABB power and automation solutions.
Source:Bravida
