On 8 April the Group and the Central Asian Mining and Metallurgical Engineering Institute signed a strategic cooperation agreement in Astana, attended by senior management and technical teams from both sides. As the Group's operating and development mines move into primary ore, the share of refractory material containing arsenic and carbon is rising, making processing and metallurgical capability a decisive variable for long-term recovery and cost. The agreement addresses precisely this question.
The joint laboratory is budgeted at KZT 1.2 billion and will include a pilot line rated at 2 t of ore a day. Three research projects have been approved in the first round, with results to be applied first at Saryarka and Shygys.
Three priorities are set out. The first is a comparison of pre-oxidation routes for refractory gold ore, with a systematic assessment of the economics of pressure oxidation and bio-oxidation under local energy and climate conditions. The second is heap leaching of low-grade oxide ore, focusing on crush size, irrigation regime and winter insulation. The third is tailings reprocessing, evaluating the recovery of gold, silver and copper from tailings and the use of tailings sand in backfill and construction materials.
The joint laboratory will be built in Karaganda, with equipment installation and start-up planned before the end of 2026 and a pilot line rated at 2 t of ore a day. The agreement is explicit on project approval, intellectual property and technology transfer: patents generated jointly are co-owned, the Group holds priority rights to apply them at its own sites, and the laboratory will approve no fewer than three research projects a year.
On people and standards, the parties will exchange technical staff each year for secondments of at least three months, jointly supervise master's students in processing and geology, and take part together in drafting Kazakhstani industry standards for processing and metallurgy. Cooperation is expected to extend further into mine digitalisation, predictive maintenance of equipment and automated control.
Resource, grade, capacity and investment figures in this article are stated on an interim basis; the Group's formal announcements and reviewed technical documents prevail.