Fragmentation in production rounds and mill through-put in the Aitik copper mine, a summary of development projects 2002–2009

Aitik steadily pushes towards higher productivity. A new plant was installed in 2010 and the mine expects to double capacity by 2014 (Renström 2010).

The interface between the mine and the plant before 2010 lay after the two primary crushers (Bergman 2005), which deliver ore to the primary mills via a stock pile. To operate efficiently the plant desires ore with known and constant copper content. The mine tries to accommodate by planning the blasting and sometimes hauling from several rounds at once. A complication is that the stock pile is small, 50 kton or 24 hr of production, and that it doesn’t homogenize the ore variations as intended.