YEREVAN. - Rare metals and construction materials can be produced from waste dump of Zangezur Copper Molybdenum Combine (ZCMC), Manvel Voskanyan, Director of Alyotig LLC and project investor told Armenian News – NEWS.am.  

The combine will pass its waste dump to the company on the right of ownership, for further processing. “We already know about the useful substances and their amount. We don’t want to say what reclamation technology we are going to apply until we patent it and start working,” Voskanyan said.

In the Soviet period, Armenia tested technologies of reclamation from the waste of Armenia’s Kajaran Construction Material Combine. Responding to the question on whether the company studied those projects, Voskanyan said: “I personally took part in them, we were getting control samples of construction materials.”

Waste dumps of ZCMC, which has been operating since the late 1940s, already reach 300 million tones and grow by 18-20 million tones annually. The investor is going to construct a plant with annual capacity of 12,5 million tones. During the first stage of the project, it is planned to open around 1 thousand permanent and 500 temporary vacancies. as well as free 400-600 ha of agricultural lands from under the waste piles.