BGN 1 billion for new mines in the Rhodope Mountains Mining Renaissance and investments of over BGN 1 billion are planned for the Rhodopes Mountain, if high metal prices are relatively sustained on global markets. This provides the research "Social Economy in Miningin the Rhodopes" by journalists from the Standart - Ruslan Yordanov and from Tema – Dimitar Sabev, presented by Friedrich Ebert. By the end of 2016 must be opened gold mine near Krumovgrad, owned by the Canadian company Dundee Precious Metals. Under the Ada Tepe hill lie 28.1 tons of gold and 13.9 tons of silver. Planned investments there are USD 164 million. According to the promises, the Dundee project will provide well-paid employment for 250 people in the area with official unemployment rate of 18%, as well as government revenues of BGN 3.2 million per year. During the 9-year life of the mine production is planned the extraction of 850 thousand tons of ore annually, of which will be extracted 11,500 tons of concentrate. Large investments are planned for the extraction of tungsten ore in the region of Velingrad - deposit Grancharitsa Center near the village of Krastava. Concessionaire Resource 1 JSC, part of the KCM 2000 consortium. The project capacity of the field, which is located 20 km from Velingrad is about 10 mln tons of ore, or 285 thousand tons per year. The ore will be crushed and sorted on site and will be transported by truck to the flotation plant Mining Invest in Elshitsa, Sredna Gora. The investor promises BGN 150 million of investments, 200 permanent jobs for 30 years of operations, 300 additional temporary construction jobs. Deposits of Grancharitsa are calculated to 9.4 million tons of ore containing 30,807 tons of tungsten trioxide. GORUBSO Kardzhali with 4 gold mines GORUBSO Kardzhali plans in the coming years to develop four gold mines in the Eastern Rhodopes. In the most advanced phase is the project near the village of Sedefche, where it has found a deposit of 3.6 tons of gold, and there is an approved EIA report. The ore will be enriched on the spot and will be transported by truck to Kardzhali. In the development of the mine will be opened 50 jobs for local residents. Similar will be the employment of each of the other three geological discoveries, for which the company has filed a notice of investment intention: Momchil, Kitnitsa and Nadezhda. Deposit Momchil is situated between Momchilgrad and Krumovgrad. The project envisages an open pit mine with an annual output of 80,000 tons of ore for 10 years. Geological studies indicate the presence of 2.6 million tons of polymetallic gold-silver ores. The procedure for deposit Momchil is currently suspended by decision of the RIEW Haskovo, since a large part of its territory falls within the protected zone Ribino. Deposits Kitnitsa and Nadezhda fall in Ardino ore field, respectively near the villages Kitnitsa and Makedontsi. Nadezhda has planned annual output of 100 thousand tons of ore for 20 years over an area of 166 decares. Kitnitsa deposits reach 2.9 mln tons of gold and silver ores. Per year will be mined 100 thousand tons. Both mines are to undergo the environmental impact assessment (EIA). According to Executive Director of GORUBSO Kardzhali - Zhivka Kovacheva, political uncertainty in Bulgaria is a major impediment to the realization of the planned investments. Interest in the gold deposits in the Rhodope also shows Assarel - producer of copper, developing the largest open pit mine in the Balkans. In 2012 it bought Trace Resources - a division of the Canadian mining company EuroMax Resources, which owns the rights to exploration of gold-silver deposits near the town of Rakitovo. It is estimated there are contained 7 tons of gold and 100 tons of silver. It is assumed that in the region of Rakitovo there are deposits of copper, lead and zinc. New factory near Rudozem The good market situation also revived the mining of lead and zinc ores in the Rhodope Mountains. In the summer for the first time in two decades opened a "new" mine: the idle since1999 Varba – Batantsi, which provided over 200 new jobs. GORUBSO Madan JSC plans to develop in coming years concession of Pechinsko, 12 km away from Zlatograd with alleged deposits for 20-25 years yield. In the long run mining company plans to reopen the old mine Shahonitsa in Rudozem municipality. Near Rudozem is to be put into operation the first new enrichment plant since 1989 - owned by Rudmetal JSC, which operates the mine Dimov Dol. The mobile flotation plant will become operational by the end of 2015 near the shaft Golqm Palas – Sever, 7 km from the city and will hire 35 people. Flotation plant is worth BGN 5.5 million, being built with funds under OP "Competitiveness and Innovation", which EU grant funding is 50%. It will introduce a full cycle of water and the produced tailings will be disposed inside the old mine. 15 explore for riches Existing authorizations for prospecting and exploration of metallic minerals in the Rhodopes are currently 15. Virtually the entire territory of Haskovo Mineral Baths is divided into three areas for exploration of polymetallic ores. Section Kaleto is held by GORUBSO – Kardzhali, which plans to expand its operations in the neighboring area with its only operating mine Chala. Another area - Bqlo (191 square kilometers), received permission to drill by Alpha Bulgaria, a subsidiary of Canadian Mundoro Capital. In 2014 Mundoro sought gold, silver and copper in other adjacent area - Zvezda. According to the mayor - Myumyun Iskender, the Canadian company has said that the first results are encouraging and as a sign of serious intent it has donated BGN 60 thousand to repair the health service in Mineral baths. Dundee Precious Metals or its subsidiaries in exploring the area near Iran Tepe near the village of Pelin, in the village of Yugovo near Laki, in the Diva area between Krumovgrad and Momchilgrad and in Kesebir, Krumovgrad Municipality. GORUBSO - Madan looks for lead and zinc ores near Ardino. Near the village of Ribnovo, where the Bulgarian-German company MAD Pirin has implemented experimental extraction of antimony in the 1940s, drilling is performed by the registered in Pernik Bulgarian Commodity Trade. Geological studies are being carried also near the villages Babiak (Belitsa municipality) Bahteritsa (Banite municipality) and Kondovo (Ivaylovgrad municipality). BGN 13 million earn by industry At the end of 2014, the mining and processing industries in the Rhodopes employ around 2,700 people, which is 20% of the number of staff in the "golden years" of GORUBSO. Total 10 mines and four concentrating factories - Kardzhali, Rudozem, Erma River and Lucky, operate in the mountain. The total book value of the assets of the Rhodope mining and floating enterprises as in 2012 is BGN 137 million. It is noteworthy that companies that operate Rhodope mining today have Bulgarian capital - unlike the large deposits of copper and gold in Sredna Gora and the Balkan Mountains, which are developed mainly by foreign companies. Until recently, each investor chose a separate Rhodope municipality: Zlatograd for Minstroy Holding under the control of Nikolay Vulkanov, Madan - Valentin Zahariev (former owner of ROF in Rudozem and OCK Kardzhali), Laki - KCM under the management of Nikolay Dobrev. This structure changed in 2012, when OCK went bankrupt and KCM and Minstroy created a joint venture to revive the systematically drained GORUBSO - Madan. As to 2012, salaries in the Rhodope mining amounted to BGN 23.46 million, which corresponds to BGN 808 of average monthly salary. Official profit of Rhodope mining companies is BGN 13.15 million, which at BGN 107 million sales revenue is over 0.12 coefficient of profitability of sales - a very significant result for the manufacturing sector. Miners of the future will be managed by joystick Mines and concentration plants in the Rhodopes work with technology from the 70s and 80s, with one major exception - Lucky Invest. Since 2008, the company introduced mobile mining model and has so far invested BGN 6.3 million for the purchase of the latest generation of mining equipment. Furthermore, besides the tunnel carriages, loaders and mining trucks were acquired three new drilling systems. Old ventilation channels are replaced with French quiet energy efficient ventilation systems. Introduction of drill rigs completely changed the image of the mining craft - the physical labor disappears from it. Self-propelled drill rig is a hydraulic gun with great power, which is mounted on the telescope. Operators of these mining machines do not touch drills and work in a separate cabin with ventilation without being affected by dust and noise. The command panel of the coach is a joystick, and the management is like a game of Playstation. This avoids the risk of silicosis and vibration diseases. Drill rigs perform the work for an hour done by a miner for 12 hours. The overall effect of the new machines is 40-fold increase in productivity. The company has established a professional training center, where are trained operators and drivers of new generations of coaches, loaders and trucks. "In the old mining model is using complex infrastructure of the mines, percentage of heavy physical work is very large. The most typical is that weaning the ore is done with hand tools, transport – with railways and underground shafts," said Deputy Director of Lucky Invest - Neycho Neychev. In the new model, train technique is entirely replaced by auto. It takes much less auxiliary workers and labor productivity increases, which enables poorer ores – the kind in Laki, to be developed with high profitability. The company plans to introduce a fully mobile technology by the end of 2015. Currently there are two mines with hybrid schemes: most of the work is done with mobile mining equipment and the rest in a conventional way. On the agenda is the gradual introduction of full automation of the flotation process. Lucky Invest has a contract with a Russian research institute for improving the flotation. "The example we seek is the mining complex Tara Mine in Ireland, where 170 miners produce 2.3 million tons of ore, which are then processed into ultra-modern dressing factory with 5 operators. Manual labor is entirely removed," said Neychev. Germans and Russians were among the first in the business Modern mining in the Rhodope Mountains began in the late 20s when Eng. Ivan Savov established the company Rhodope Metal, which received the concession Strashimir and opened concentrator plant in the village of Srednogortsi. In the early 40s the Bulgarian-German company Pirin Granitoid started production at the mines Borieva and Gyudyurska then opened its enrichment plant in Kardzhali and built the ropeway Borieva - Kardzhali (42 km). In the period from 1941 to the end of 1944 the Germans mined about 285 thousand tons with an average lead content of 11% and zinc with 5%. The rapid development of mining occurred in the 50s with the help of Soviet geologists, mining engineers and enrichment operators. In the strongest year of the giant GORUBSO it employed over 20,000 people and extraction between 1965 and 1989 permanently secured over 3.2 million tons per year. In 1989 worked 19 mines, 51 stations and 4 concentrating factories. In total from all deposits in the period 1878-1995 were harvested 160 million tons of lead-zinc ores containing 3.64 million tons of lead and 2.79 million tons of zinc. Approximately two-thirds of the lead and three quarters of the zinc were derived from the Madan ore field. It is believed that before the nationalization in 1947, have been mined 738 thousand tons of ore, which have provided 53 thousand tons of lead and 25 thousand tons of zinc.
Source: Standart (02.02.2015)

Two companies will look for natural resources in Ivaylovgrad, Lucky and Chepelare Investment for more than BGN 770 thousand for exploration of mineral resources will be made in the municipalities of Ivaylovgrad, Lucky and Chepelare. This what the government decided with approving permits for exploration of chances for extraction of natural resources. Bulgnais OOD will look for stone materials in the area Acacia, located in the village of Pokrovan, Ivaylovgrad municipality. Permit is grantee for a term of a year, as the expected amount of the investment is more than BGN 25 thousand. For a term of three years Lucky invests AD was rendered permit to look for and exploration of metallic minerals in the area of Luck", located in the villages of Dzhurkovo, Dryanovo, Geranium, Lukavitsa and Monastery, Lucky, and Bogutevo village, Chepelare Municipality. Total value of the planned expenditures for prospecting and exploration work is BGN 750,000 while the amount, set for activities on environmental protection and reclamation total BGN 10,000
Source: profit.bg (24.08.2015)

The government approved the establishment of four licenses for prospecting and exploring opportunities for mining. Calcit EOOD will examine non-metallic industrial minerals in the area Milomir, Dragoman Municipality. Road Construction - Veliko Tarnov AD will examine building materials in the area Sheremetya - North, located in the area of the village Sheremetya, Veliko Tarnovo. The authorization is granted for a period of one year, during which the company will invest at least BGN 36 thousand in exploration activities. Investments expected by Varba-Batantsi AD for exploration of metallic minerals in the area Chereshkata are for minimum BGN 835 thousand for a period of two years. Saffir-SS-2000 EOOD will examine stone materials in the area Petkov, located in the village Kobilino, Ivaylovgrad Municipality. With two years is extended the authorization for prospecting and exploration of oil and natural gas in Block 1-12 Republic, located in the districts of Vratsa, Pleven, Lovech, Gabrovo and Veliko Tarnovo, where Sofia-based Exploration and Production of Oil and Gas AD operates since 2010.
Source: investor.bg (08.10.2015)