Representative of the enterprise specified that in the middle of 2010 the enterprise is planning to put into operation concentrating mill with capacity of 500 thousand tonnes of ore per year and underground mine in the field of Handiza in Kashkadarya region. General contractor of this mill construction is Swiss Zeromax GmbH.

According to his estimation, production capacity of concentrating mill can be 5 thousand tonnes of cooper concentrate, 20 thousand tonnes of leaden concentrate and 60 thousand tonnes of leaden concentrate annually.

Project of ore mining and processing enterprise construction also provides construction of leaden concentrating mill, which should process 500 thousand tonnes of ore annually and reconstruction of mine in the field of Uch-Kulach in Jizzakh region.

Production capacity of leaden concentrating mill, which will be put into operation in the third quarter of 2010, will be comparable with the concentrating mill in the field of Handiza in terms of production volumes.

According to estimation of the representative of AGMK, the project realization will allow the enterprise load capacity of zinc production with own resources by 50%. In the present moment zinc production of AGMK with planned capacity of 125 thousand tonnes work entirely on tolling scheme from Russia. Leaden concentrate will also be processed on functioning enterprise capacities.

Feasability study of the project was prepared in cooperation with Russian Institute Mehanobr engineering (Saint-Petersburg). The project is funded out of proceeds of AGMK and credit of the Fund for Reconstruction and Development of the Republic of Uzbekistan at the amount of US$11 million. In August 2006 the president of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov by his Decree gave AGMK a right to develop polymetallic field of “Handiza”, which previously was owned by British Oxus Gold.

The field reserves according to JORC classification make 14.4 million tonnes of ore, which contains 134 grams/ton of silver, 7.24 grams/ton of zinc, 3.5 grams/ton of lead, 0.86 grams/ton of cooper and 0.38 grams/ton of gold. Taking into account current prices in the world market, the field reserves can be estimated at the amount of US$4.33 billion. Ore also contains selenium, cadmium and indium.

OJSC Almalik Mining (Almalik, Tashkent region), a leading cooper producer in Central Asia, has a right to develop fields of cooper-molybdenum and lead-zinc ores in Tashkent region. The enterprise produces fine cooper (cathode), including delivery of tolling-based and scrap processing based cooper concentrate, metallic zinc, leaden concentrate and other products. 90% of silver production and 20% of gold production in the republic fell to the share of AGMK. The enterprise according to the results of 2007 reduced the production of fine cooper compared to 2006 by 3.6% (down to 89.655 thousand tonnes); zinc production of the enterprise rose by 51.7% (up to 71.82 thousand tonnes) last year.