Worth its weight in gold
The transportation of mining equipment is of crucial importance for the economic development Kazakhstan, which is rich in raw materials (see the article on page 35 of the main issue, ITJ 49-52/2013). Globalink recently transported Chinese tools for a gold mine.
Kazakhstan is one of the most important countries worldwide when it comes to raw materials and the mining of mineral resources. The government has additionally been promoting the extraction of raw materials. Early in 2013 it rescinded a moratorium on the awarding of mining rights to private investors, which had been in place since 2008. The Central Asian country says that there are approximately another 2,200 t of gold in the ground in the country. Besides demand for the transportation of equipment that is necessary for the gold to be mined, a gold refinery that is being opened in the special economic activity zone in the capital Astana in December is also of particular interest to logisticians.
Globalink was asked to handle a turnkey project that saw the delivery of three mills for a gold mine located in the mining and smelting city of Balkhash, on Lake Balkhash.
The total weight of the cargo, which originated in China, was about 650 t. Due to the dimensions the equipment had to be disassembled into components. The largest part of the mill weighed 50 t and had a volume of more than 150 cbm. Globalink’s team packed the cargo and also crated some mill parts for containerisation. The cargo was loaded onto low-bed trailers by cranes and moved from Luoyang to its destination via Khorgos station, on the Sino-Kazakh border. At Khorgos Globalink’s customs clearance team did its job and the shipment crossed the border without interruptions. The cargo was swiftly unloaded at the destination so that the customer could begin operations right away.