Plant Contract Awarded

KazakhGold Group Ltd 17 July 2007 JULY 17, 2007 KAZAKHGOLD AWARDS CONTRACT FOR NEW TAILINGS RE-TREATMENT PLANTS AT BESTOBE AND ZHOLYMBET • Maed Awarded Design And Construction Contract For 2mtpa Units • Will Form Nucleus Of Planned 4mtpa Hard Rock CIP Plants At Each Mine • Buildings To Be Fast-Tracked To Allow Construction Through Winter Months ______________________________________________________________________ KazakhGold Group Limited (LSE: KZG) is pleased to announce that Maed, the international engineering, construction and consultancy group that has a comprehensive global design and construction experience of mineral processing plants, has been awarded the contract to design and construct new tailings re-treatment plants at the Bestobe and Zholymbet gold mines in northern Kazakhstan. Maed are recognised as being leaders in the mineral processing field who have undertaken numerous projects, including tailings retreatment plants, on three Continents. These new facilities, together with a similar new plant planned for the Aksu mine at a later date, form a fundamental part of KazakhGold's Accelerated Investment Plan significantly to increase the long-term production target of the Group. All three plants will have identical configuration, each being capable of treating 2m tonnes/year (mtpa) of reclaimed tailings. Each plant will consist of two sections at separate locations - the tailings dam and processing plant sites. The tailings dam section will consist of a re-mining plant where the re-claimed tailings material can be screened, re-pulped for transport to the main treatment plant. This will comprise milling, classification and thickening sections, followed by a leach/CIP circuit. The leaching section will utilise oxygen shear technology (accelerating the kinetics of the gold dissolution reaction) to pre-condition the pulp prior to cyanide addition, and adsorption of the gold will be based on carbon-in-pulp technology. In the recently published annual report, KazakhGold confirmed that the Accelerated Investment Plan will increase the proportion of ore treated by the more efficient carbon-in-pulp (CIP) process. New 4mtpa CIP plants will be constructed at each of the three main mines to process oxide ore. The main treatment sections of the tailings re-treatment plants will be designed so that, with the addition of further equipment, they will form the nucleus of the new 4mtpa oxide ore treatment plants at each mine. The new tailings re-treatment plants at Bestobe and Zholymbet are expected to be commissioned in the third quarter of 2008, and each is designed to recover 90,000oz/year of gold. The Bestobe plant will operate on tailings until mid-2010 when it is scheduled to switch to treating oxide ore. Conversion to oxide ore will take place approximately one year later at the Zholymbet plant. The immediate objective of the contracts now awarded to Maed is to fast-track building construction so that the shells are completed before the onset of winter. This will allow construction and the installation of equipment to continue inside these buildings throughout the winter period. Commenting today, KazakhGold Executive Chairman, Dr Kanat Assaubayev, said: 'We are very pleased to award these contracts to Maed who have an established presence on site, and have been advising our technical team on the planned new CIP plants since last year. The re-treatment of tailings will boost gold production, and when these plants convert to treatment of oxide ore in 2-3 years' time it will greatly increase the Group's treatment capacity, improve overall gold recovery and this should result in significantly lower operating costs.' Further information: Aidar Assaubayev Executive Vice Chairman KazakhGold Group Limited Tel: +7 327 250 9264 Sanzhar Assaubayev General Manager, London Office KazakhGold Group Limited Tel: +7 777 723 8888 Ron Marshman/John Greenhalgh City of London PR Limited Tel: +44 (0)20 7628 5518 This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
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