Pakistan's largest Chinese mine warns it may cease operations: report
Pakistan's largest Chinese-operated copper and gold mine, Saindak Metals, warns it may cease operations within a month due to worsening law and order affecting essential transport in Balochistan.
- Pakistan's reliance on the Saindak project for copper output.
- Regional instability impacting Pakistan's resource extraction ambitions.
- Hazardous road conditions affecting mine operations and logistics.
Saindak Metals Limited, the biggest Chinese-operated copper and gold mine in Pakistan, has warned that a deteriorating law and order situation in Balochistan may force it to cease operations within a month, reported the Financial Times on Wednesday.
“The prevailing law and order situation in the province has severely affected the transportation of essential project cargo,” wrote the managing director of Saindak Metals Limited in a letter to the energy ministry.
“If this situation continues unabated, the uninterrupted operation of the Saindak Copper-Gold Project may become unsustainable, and there is a serious likelihood that the project’s operations may be forced to cease within a month owing to the non-availability of essential production materials and logistical support,” added the letter.
Saindak Metals Limited is a public sector company in Pakistan primarily associated with the Saindak Copper-Gold Project in Balochistan, which it launched with the Resource Development Corporation (RDC). This project was established as the country’s first large-scale mining venture.
SML engaged China’s Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC) as the contractor to build the Saindak project in 1992, with the project initially planned as a turnkey operation to be completed and handed over by August 1995.
As per FT, citing official statistics, almost all of the project’s output accounted for the majority of Pakistan’s roughly $750 million of copper products last year.
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As per FT’s report, the letter to the energy ministry says that the main issue for its operations is road travel, which has become “increasingly hazardous”.
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“Saindak’s woes mark the latest blow to Pakistan’s ambitions to turn its western frontier into a hub for natural resource extraction and a source of much-needed export revenue,” the FT said.
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