Bangladesh News

Madhyapara Granite Mining Company Limited (MGMCL), a hard rock mining project of Petrobangla, finally entered into trial production yesterday afternoon after missing the original deadline of production 12 years back, according to MGMCL sources.
The project is expected to be handed over within the next three months if Namnam — the company that got the contract of the job — performs the trial run successfully.

According to the project proposal, Namnam will have to develop five blocks and have to extract at least 6660 metric tons of granite from each block, according to sources.

Sources said rock extraction from the first block has been stared on October 10. Tentative dates for extraction from the other blocks are as follows — second block on October 17, third block on October 27, forth block on November 20 and the fifth one on November 27.

After completion of the trial production from all five blocks, Namnam will have to perform a 24-hour test run on December 12 this year. The rock mining will be ready for handover only after this goes successfully, said Asadullah, a mining engineer of the project.

As per the original project profile, the company was to prepare the mine in June 1998 and hand it over to Petrobangla on November the same year. The original project cost in the first project profile (PP) was Tk.650 crore.

Namnam signed the contract with Petrobangla in March 2004 under a North Korean supplier’s credit project. Repeated delays by Namnam cost the government an additional Tk 600 crore, according to our sources.

This year, the project was supposed to go on test run in June, but failed due to technical glitches. Then the deadline for the test run was extended to October, added the sources.

Targeted extraction of granite from the mine is around 1.65 million tonnes per year and the duration of the project is set for 46 years.