Macro Roundup (Mar 16)

At 9:58 am on 12 September, the core smelting furnace of the polymetallic recovery project's pyrometallurgy system at Yingkou Jianfa Shenghai Nonferrous Chemical Co., Ltd. was successfully ignited, officially entering the furnace drying stage and marking a key step toward full-line commissioning and production. Public information shows that the Yingkou Jianfa Shenghai polymetallic complex gold-silver ore comprehensive recovery technology upgrade, relocation and expansion project uses copper concentrates as its main raw material, with an overall planned capacity of 600,000 mt/year of copper cathode. It is being built in two phases, with capacity of 300,000 mt/year in each phase. Phase one is designed to produce 300,000 mt/year of copper cathode and 1.18 million mt/year of sulphuric acid, supported by smelting, converting, anode refining, electrolysis, slag beneficiation and precious metal recovery systems. Following the ignition, the project will carry out standardised furnace drying and hot-state integrated commissioning across the entire system, verifying equipment, instrumentation, interlocks and automatic control systems. The project has not yet formally started raw material feed and production. Once furnace drying and system commissioning are completed, it will move forward with bringing the phase-one 300,000 mt/year copper cathode capacity into production. If the project is successfully commissioned, it will increase copper smelting capacity in north-east China and further boost China's demand for copper concentrate raw materials.