Business model and production process

The Company continues its exploration and assessment work in order to develop and expand its resource base. Geological activities can be divided into three main areas:

• greenfield exploration – exploring new deposits;
• brownfield exploration – appraisal of resources which have been partially surveyed and documented;
• in-mine and near-mine exploration – appraisal of areas adjacent to the currently worked assets in order to extend the operational period.

The copper ore deposit mining technology at all three mines is based on room-and-pillar methods, using blasting technology to mine the deposit. It includes opening and preparatory works consisting of:

• contouring with a network of corridor workings provided for the mining of the deposit parcels,
• cutting the rockmass with rooms and belts (separating a number of technological pillars),
• mining the deposit,
• hauling the excavated material to branch dumps, where crushing of large lumps of rock (oversize) takes place at the dumping point (grating), and
• transporting the excavated material to the shaft tanks, from where it is brought to the surface by skip shaft lifts.

Flotation enrichment yields a concentrate with an average copper content of approx. 22-23%, as well as flotation waste. The Rudna Concentrator produces concentrate with the highest copper content (approx. 26%), while the lowest is at the Lubin Concentrator (approx. 13.4%). The Polkowice Concentrator Region produces a concentrate with a copper content of approx. 24.6%.

The dried concentrate with a moisture content of about 8.8% is transported by rail to the smelters: Legnica Copper Smelter and Refinery located in Legnica and Głogów I Copper Smelter and Refinery and Głogów II Copper Smelter and Refinery located in Głogów.

Tailings in the form of slurry are transported by pipelines to the Żelazny Most Tailings Storage Facility, where the solids are sedimented, and the clarified water is captured and redirected to the processing plants. At the same time, the landfill serves as a retention and dosing reservoir for excess mine-process water in circulation. 

Copper smelters produce electrolytic copper based on their own concentrates and international inputs (copper concentrates, copper scrap, blister copper).

The Legnica Copper Smelter and Refinery uses a multi-stage process whose main stages include: preparation of the charge material, its reduction smelting in shaft furnaces to the form of matte copper, conversion to the form of blister copper with approx. 98.5% copper content; fire refining in anode furnaces to produce anodes of 99.2% copper content; and electrorefining. The final product is electrolytic copper cathodes with 99.99% copper content.

The Głogów Copper Smelter and Refinery uses a single-stage technology of processing concentrate in flash furnaces, based on a license from the Finnish company Outokumpu. The dried concentrate with a moisture content of 0.3% H2O is smelted in a flash furnace to form blister copper with a Cu content of approx. 98.6%, which undergoes fire refining in anode furnaces. The slurry slag containing about 12%-14% copper is sent for decopperization in an electric furnace, and the resulting CuPbFe alloy is sent to converters, from which copper with a purity of 98.5% also goes for refining in anode furnaces. The anodes obtained in the process of fire refining are subjected to the process of electrorefining whose end product is electrolytic copper in the form of cathodes with the content of 99.99% of Cu.

Approximately 49% of the electrolytic copper produced by the smelters of KGHM Polska Miedź S.A. is processed in the rolling mill of the Cedynia Copper Wire Rod Plant, where copper wire rod is produced by continuous melting, casting and rolling, and oxygen-free copper rod and low-alloy oxygen-free copper rod with silver, is made using UPCAST technology.

Sludge generated in the electrorefining processes at KGHM smelters contains precious metals and is a raw material at the Precious Metal Plant at the Głogów Copper Smelter and Refinery for the production of: refined silver, gold, palladium-platinum concentrate and selenium. In turn, the electrolyte withdrawn from the tankhouse circuit, after decopperization, is directed to the production of crude nickel sulphate.

Lead-bearing dust and sludge from the dust removal from process gases of all smelters are smelted together with decopperized converter slag from the slurry line in Dörschl furnaces in the Lead Division of the Głogów Copper Smelter and Refinery to form crude lead with 99.3% Pb content. Raw lead undergoes a refining process at the Legnica Copper Smelter and Refinery, which results in a final product in the form of refined lead with a 99.85% Pb content.