SARAJEVO (Bosnia and Herzegovina), May 11 (SeeNews) – UK-based metal mining company Mineco said on Friday it has opened its lead mine in the municipality of Olovo in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
It is the first new metal mine opened in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the last 30 years and the only underground one in the country, Mineco said in a statement sent to SeeNews after launching operations at the mine on Thursday.
Mineco employs a staff in its Olovo mine, in which it has invested 6.0 million euro ($7.2 million) over the past six years.
"This is the safest mine in Bosnia and Herzegovina; we have set the standards for the further development of mining in BiH", Mineco Group's chief operating officer, Dominic Roberts, said in the statement.
The British ambassador to Bosnia, Edward Ferguson, greeted the capital investment by Mineco.
"We expect the full support of the responsible institutions for the remaining administrative procedures, so the mine can operate at full capacity and enable long-term, sustainable employment for hundreds of people in Olovo and surrounding municipalities," he said during the opening ceremony.
The Olovo mine is expected to provide an economic boost to Bosnia, said the head of the EU delegation to Bosnia Lars-Gunnar Wigermark, who also attended the event.
"The European Union has been following this project and we hope that the mine will soon be in full swing and that it will support economic development, job creation and overall growth both in Olovo and in the whole country", Wigermark added, according to the statement.
The lead mine at Olovo has a special importance for European mining, as it is the first test mine in the IMP@CT project, which has received support from the Horizon 2020 programme to develop targets, technological innovation in the design of mining equipment and planning in the mining of smaller seams of strategically important metals like lead, zinc and antimony.
By opening the new mine in Bosnia, Mineco is continuing its growth and development, as it began test production in 2017 at Bosilegrad in Serbia in another completely new metal mine in the Western Balkan region. Bosil-Metal became the first fully built underground mine in Serbia in the last 40 years. Besides Bosil-Metal, Mineco and its partners own two more lead and zinc mines in Serbia, in Gornji Milanovac and Veliki Majdan.
In Bosnia, Mineco is also majority owner of the Gross lead and zinc mine and the antimony mine at Novo Gorazde where it carries out research. At Celebici, near Foca, research has been successful and a study on ore reserves has been certified.
($=0.838841 euro)