Could you give us some insights on the history of your company, its structure and main activities today?
In 2001 our country will celebrate its tenth anniversary of its independence. I remember the first steps our country made towards the international arena. Two months after the independence was declared I had to go to United States and meet with the officials of the trade department and discuss the issues of antidumping action on raw uranium which was declared against us. When I went to Washington I was assigned as a head of the delegation of Uzbekistan and act on behalf of Uzbekistan. I was surprised when everyone I had met were asking me where Uzbekistan is located. They were saying: Does a country like this exist? At the same time everybody knew very well Bukhara and Samarkand and majority of them had visited those sites as tourists or as political and economic spies during the Soviet Union. At that time my old friend who we call 'The old Man' and who is one of those that spent their lives working at our combinat said: 'Nikolai trust me, let some time pass by and very soon people will pronounce the word Uzbekistan with a pride.' Ten years later we were recognized and our country is a member of the United Nations Organization.
Today Navoi Metallurgical Mining combinat takes its own worthy place in the economy of the country and is a key player in the positive social-economic reforms which are being held after gaining the independence.
Our Combinat is involved and specialized in gold and uranium production and is the only one in Uzbekistan who produces uranium being 7th largest uranium seller in the world, as for the gold, we produce 85-90% of the gold produced in Uzbekistan.
From the first days of the country's independence our combinat was reformed into a state company "Kyzylkumredmetzoloto" of the Republic of Uzbekistan, which involves not only mining and metallurgical enterprises but also scientific ones such as projecting and construction enterprises. In other words, there was established a company which can solve not only today's problems but also future problems. The point is that uranium as well as gold has many problematic issues that may be rarely faced in the world. They are not often faced but still are not solved in accordance to the modern requirements especially in the field of competitiveness and price for the product in the international markets. Therefore we constantly have to be searching for scientific decisions in cooperation with the science of Uzbekistan and Russia, directed to technology improvement which will result receiving high quality products, which would also allow us to confidently access the international market.
As you know, the uranium market is very complicated and oversupplied. It is very hard to "earn" a name in this market and we have to access it and prove that the quality of our products is much higher than the ones of other companies. We were trying to do this through scientific conferences, meetings with the experts of other companies, etc., and we tried to prove that and I believe we achieved our goals in terms of uranium and gold production.
The whole world knows that Uzbek gold is the most "pure". Our Combinat is stable and has good perspectives in the future. You probably have heard that gold has a status of optimal seller shipped to London and Tokyo over-the-counter markets. Everybody is surprised how we supply 5 star gold whereas disposing technical conditions for production is only 4 star gold. What is 4 star gold? It means that one tone of gold contains 100 grams of mixtures including, including copper, platinum, silver and other types of metal. In other words the quantity of the mixture metals is so miserable that it is very hard to define its percentage content. We have worked out our technology for gold extraction that there is only 26 grams of mixtures per ton of gold. This product is very close to 5 star and the whole world has paid attention and consequently, today our products are highly demanded. Many people are desirous to purchase jewelry in our jewelry plant.
We have achieved great success in quality enhancement and ecologically pure production of uranium. The extraction process should be conducted with a minimum harm for the environment and minimum expenses. Despite the fact that our company is a leading uranium producer, we achieved this due to the fact that we use underground extraction. We do not have oars with underground or open works, it has been eight years since we closed them. This helped us to solve and deal with ecological problems. Besides that, the technology of underground extraction that we use leaves over minimum acids which means we do not actually pump in aggressive reagents into the land.
During the last few years we have increased our gold production by 40% which resulted in the creation of new gold mining enterprises in Uchkuduk city. We have implemented new gold mining technologies in Zarafshan gold extraction complex which allowed us to have higher returns even with lower priced gold market. If you have ever met with other gold mining companies I believe you have mentioned the issues on price decrease of gold in the world market during the last few years. How this decrease affected other companies? While the prices dropped below 300 USD an ounce many companies went bankrupt. Large companies still could work effectively with a gold price level of 260-270 USD an ounce having rescheduled their expenses. With a price level of 250 USD an ounce large companies as well as small companies go bankrupt. Thousands of gold mining companies disappeared in the last three years. Our technology allows us to work effectively even at the price level of 220 of USD an ounce whereby we can process higher volumes despite that the content of the pit is very low. After all, we are the 8th largest gold extractor in the world.
We pay much attention to scientific research works. We heavily invest into solving problematic issues on gold and uranium mining technology.
Those investments are directed to scientific solving
of existing problems on creation of advanced technologies.
Those include computer counter of gold reserves,
projecting, technological mining management, quality
management of extracted pits where we use GPS and
other computer technologies and which allow us to
work with minimum costs and losses and maximum quantity
of products. First of all, this refers to the technology
of selective gold extraction and its prior enrichment
with large proportions and pieces. |
As I already mentioned our Combinat has increased its gold mining volume by 40% and we have already extracted more than 70 tons of gold last year. We will increase the mining volume by 20% more in the next 5 years due to the construction of a new enterprise on the basis of "Daugiztau" and "Kokpatas" mines where we will apply our new scientific innovations which will allow us to perform more effectively using new technologies for biological acid and sorting the products. In other words, we are creating a system which maximizes extraction of more pure pits before it goes for further processing. This is an evidence that the new enterprise to be built will be operating effectively.
During this period our Combinat has launched and increased the number of products. We have built a jewelry plant with the capacity of 6 million tons a year. We have built a textile combinat "Agama" (desert lizard) which is equipped with the latest and technological equipment in the textile industry. We thereby solved the employment problem where men work in our Combinat and their wives work at the textile combinat.
We pay a lot of attention to the development of the agricultural sector. We have our own agricultural company which is located near Navoi city and which grows fruits and vegetables for the enterprises located in the middle of the Kyzylkum desert (Uchkuduk, Zarafshan, Zafarabad). It is impossible to grow agricultural products there because of lack of water. We have also launched a fruits and vegetables processing line, juice producing plant which produces apple, grape and tomato juices. We produce sufficient volume of agricultural products to meet the needs of our workers. We have 73,000 employees. There are also 300,000 people in Bukhara, Navoi, Samarkand and Tashkent regions that are bounded to the operation of our Combinat and for who we build houses, cultural centers, we feed them, we provide medical and education services, etc. We have 48 schools for children with the capacity of 320 places each. Each of them is provided with a good medical service and good conditions so that the children grow healthy. We have 18 high schools, 2 colleges and a Mining institute in Navoi city. The combinat is in charge of not only production activities but also of social life development. For example, we pay much attention to the development of sports. Best ten of our swimmers have participated in Olympic games in Atlanta, 6 swimmers have participated in Sydney. The Asian fencing champion is Anisiya Petrova who is also our girl. The best 2 moto-sport teams in Uzbekistan are our teams. The basketball champions in Uzbekistan are the girls from Zarafshan.
We have very good cultural centers in which many children study and some of them became laureates of many competitions not only in Uzbekistan but also in other countries of the world. For example, Sherzod Ostonov has become laureate of Yalta - 2000 and deserved recognition of the CIS countries.
What has been your biggest achievement being the head of this company?
I spent almost all of my life in our Combinat. I came to this Combinat right after I graduated from the Dnepropetrovsk mining institute 40 years ago. I was sent to Uchkuduk where the uranium producing enterprise was just being created. I have worked in uranium oars for 10 years. By that time we started to master gold mining. I was transferred to Zarafshan as a chief engineer and then a technical director of the enterprise where I have worked for 14 years. Then, during the Soviet period I was transferred to Navoi and I was entrusted to rule everything - gold, uranium, phosphor mining, and the most important thing they entrusted me people during the very hard period when the Soviet Union had been falling. Many of the employees were from Ukraine, and it was still a problem of taking care of their permanent residence here.
During the fall of Soviet Union many people could not deal with the difficulties they had faced and had to leave the country. Our main task was to create conditions so that people would not leave but come back here to our Combinat. We were able to solve this complicated problem with the assistance of our president Mr. Karimov Islam Abduganievich. The gold mining specialists that are considered the best were only in the Soviet Union. Having witnessed the dynamic development of Uzbekistan and equality of people, despite of their nationality, people trusted our government and moreover started creative works. During the last ten years many leading specialists came back to us and now educate young people for which we thank them sincerely. Those young people are mostly Uzbeks. Ten years ago there were only 22-23% Uzbeks working in our Combinat, today this number achieved 65% and moreover they are involved in the major activities - oars, plants where high qualification is required. I mentioned that we had colleges and institute. We have set a special goal to prepare local people to become a worthy replacement for the people who created and worked here for 40 years developing the production of our Combinat and now it is time for them to retire.
So this allows me to say confidently that we have a clear vision of our perspectives. We are solving not only current problems but also future problems which involve launching new mines, new technologies, new types of products that are highly demanded in the world market. We work in a close cooperation with many foreign companies like Newmont, Caterpillar, Nukem, Marubeni, Kamatsu, Mantekraft, Shell and many other companies. We already have very warm and trust-based relationships with many of them. For example, we work with Newmont on a full trust base. If there is a problem we gather a group of specialists which go to Denver and recommend Newmont how to minimize expenses of gold mining using our technologies. They tell us how to solve some problems during the mining process using their advanced technologies.
In conclusion I would repeat once more that our company has a trustworthy and confident perspective and will be working for at least 50 more years.
NOTE: World Investment News Ltd cannot be made responsible for the content of unedited transcriptions. |
Navoi Metallurgical and Mining Combinat 