Artemyevsky is an operating underground mine exploiting a larg, high grade, polymetallic, gold and silver-rich VMS deposit. A number of different steeply dipping ore bodies have been identified in the deposit, the most important of which is the Main Orebody, with a strike length of 1,300 m and maximum thickness of 200 m. This is the sole source of ore at the present time, with working on the 7, 8, 9 and 10 Levels. The higher-grade but less continuous Talovskaya Orebody is located 50-150 m in the footwall of the main Orebody, while the Kamishinskaya orebody forms a protective pillar below an old open pit and to protect the underground workings from flooding.

There are further six orebodies that form series sub-parallel lenses gently pitching to the east of the Main and Talovskaya orebodies.

The ore showsa vertical gradation through the individual bodies of polymetallic ores at the top, barite/polymetallic ores, polymetallic ores, copper/zinc ores and copper ores at the base. There are copper rich mineralised zones below these orebodies within the footwall volcanics of the Tavolka formation.

Access to the mine is through three vertical shafts and an adit from the mined-out Kamishinskaya Open Pit. Ore production is by drilling and blasting roadways 4 x 4 m or 15 x 10 m stopes with length varying up to 50 m. Monomatic drill from Finland are used for horizontal drilling and Atlas Copco Simba drills for Vertical fan drilling.

Blasted ore is loaded and hauled to an ore pass using TORO LHD with 3.2 m3 buckets. The ore passes are equipped with the grizzley bars and hydraulic rock breakers. The sized ore goes to the underground storage bunkers via a conveyor system and is loaded into 20 t EJC underground dumps trucks and transported to the surface stockpile. Another ore stream goes to the underground crusher for hoisting to the surface via an 8 m dia. shaft. 42 t Belaz trucks haul the ore from the shaft bunkers to an adiacent surface stockpile. From the stockpile ore is transported to the Nikolaevsky Concentrator by trucks. A part of this ore goes to the third party concentrator.

The mine utilizes mechanized blasthole stoping and cut and fill mining methods.

Nikolaevsky concentrator.

Ore is received in the feed storage building and tipped intj the primary crusher and reduced down to less than 300mm. Crushed ore is fed separately to two SAG mill, 7 m by 2.3 m with a design capacity of 95 tph, actual thoughput of 100 tph and the maximum capacity is130 tph. The increase in capacity to the design capacity was achieved by the introduction of rubber liners to the mill and the addition 100 mm steel balls.

Each SAG mill feeds two ball mills (3.6 by 4 m) which are in series with closed circuit classification cyclones. Output from the secondary ball mills is fed to a common tertiary ball mill (4.5 by 5 m) in closed circuit with cyclones. Cyclone overflow is fed to the copper flotation circuit.

The copper flotation is a four-stage process, involving rougher and three stages of cleaning. There is some regrinding in another ball mill after the first flotation. Various float products of different grades report to the copper concentrate stream while the tailings from the rougher stage report to the zinc circuit. Cell sizes range from 2.5 to 3.2 m3.

The thickened copper concentrate slurry is pumped to a series of vacuum filters and from there dried in a direct heated rotary kiln. The dewatered concentrate is stored in bins for loading into rail wagons to be transported to the Balkhash smelter. The zinc-pyrite concentrate is thickened, filtered and stored for transport to the Kazak Zinc smelter.

The feed is sampled at the overflow of the grinding sections, the tailings at the end of the rougher banks and the final concentrate at the feed to the thickeners. Inter stage flotation are also sampled. Plant faad tonnage is measured and recorded by weightometers installed on each of the rod mill feed conveyors and concentrate is weighed after loading onto rail wagons. There is no local smelter or refinery capacity and copper concentrates are railed to the Balkhash smelter and refinery. Zinc concentrate is sold to Kaz Zinc and processed in there Ust-Kamenogorsk plant.