Sungun Mine

Sungun copper deposit is located in east Azerbijan province in mountainous area and North West of Ahar city. Mine is connected to Tabriz city through a road that is about 125 km.

This deposit is in the middle of Qarabagh Mountains that highest altitude of the area from open sea is about 2700 m. Pakhir and sungun River is streaming through the mine area that after joining to Mian-café river they makes Ilgene-chai river.Climate condition in winter is cold and in the summer is moderate and because of the humidity ,the area is compactly covered by plant and jungle. Max of temperature in summer is 33 oc and minimum is -16 oc in winter. This area is part of the global copper belt (ALP-HIMALIA).

Base on the exploration through 1979-1993 confirmed reservoir of this mine is about 740 Million tons with copper grade 0.661% and molybdenum grade 240 ppm,probable reservoir is about 1,700 million tons . From 1993 complete technical studies started by Iranian and foreign consultant companies. Result of these studies is open-pit method with 384 million tons minable reservoir with grade.0665% for 31 years in 4 phase with total overburden 680 million tons (w/o=1.8), annual production is 7 million tons for first 5 years and 14 million tons for remaining years.

Concurrent pre-stripping operation started and from 1999 other part of mine like road building, refinery factory, dam building, pre-stripping ……… advanced faster. As scheduled, in 2005 mine and refinery factory will be ready. Taskmaster is NICICO-Sungun Copper Project. Mobin from 1998 to now is working there as a overburden removal contractor that from 1998 to September 2004 has excavated 55.2 million tons.

Year	Mine Stone (Cubic Meters)	Overburden (Cubic Meters)
1998	_	770,352.1
1999	_	2,953,872.5
2000	_	2,908,279.5
2001	_	4,939,558.5
2002	_	4,340,420.9
2003 ( End of September)	_	1,922,817.7
TOTAL	_	17,835,301.2