Hutti Gold Mines charts its modernisation plan

The state-owned Hutti Gold Mines Company Ltd (HGML), the country's lone gold mining company, has chalked out a modernisation-cum-expansion of mining at its mines in Hutti. It plans to expand its wind energy generation capacity at Chitradurga. The capital expenditure is estimated at Rs 240 crore, a top company official said.

“We are in the process of floating global tenders for the supply and installation of a six-metre shaft at Hutti for an investment of Rs 204 crore. In addition to this, we are looking at installing one more manual ball mill for Rs 25 crore this year,” V Chandrasekhar, managing director, HGML said.

HGML presently operates over a century-old gold mine at Hutti, about 480 kms from Bangalore. It extracts about 3.5 tonnes of gold annually. Presently, HGML has a cash reserve of Rs 220 crore.

He said the company has completed the installation of a sag and ball mill (semi-autogenous grinding ball mill) at Hutti at an investment of Rs 68 crore and is presently carrying the load trials. It will be operationalised this month. Sag and ball mill will bring economy in energy consumption, reduce manpower utilisation and extract higher gold at Hutti, he said.

He said the installation of a six-metre radius shaft would enable the company extract gold at depths of over 2,000 feet at its mines in Hutti. “We expect to increase production of gold ore by 20 per cent from the present levels of 500,000 tonnes per annum to 600,000 tonnes per annum and increase gold realisation up to 8 gms per tonne of ore with the sinking of new shaft,” Chandrasekhar said.

The company has engaged Ranchi-based Central Mine Planning and Design Institute for preparing a mine plan for the second phase mining at Hutti and documents for floating a global tender.

He said the company is planning to expand its wind power plant capacity another 2.1 Mw for Rs 10 crore this year. It presently operates a 9.3 Mw windmill at Chitradurga. It has finalised a contract with Suzlon for setting up the additional capacity.

The company has reported a provisional net profit of Rs 94 crore for 2009-10, almost flat compared to last fiscal. Its sales grew by a marginally 3 per cent to Rs 354 crore during the fiscal.