“The plant will have a processing capacity of 150,000 tons of concentrate per year and a production of 65,000 tons of metallic zinc, in addition to indium, gallium, and metallic silver,” the Minister said.

Villavicencio assured that the investment for the construction of the plant, in the Oruro municipality of Vinto, will amount to 350 million dollars.

Representatives of the Vinto Metallurgical Company, where the refinery will be located, and the Ministry of Public Investment and External Financing, dependent on the Ministry of Development Planning, are in charge of the protocols to make the credit effective.

According to Villavicencio, this will allow Bolivia to make a quality leap in this sphere, since the plant will make it possible to melt and refine the mineral for its sale abroad. Additionally, it will recover the value of other chemical elements of great technological demand in the world market such as gallium, germanium and indium.

According to information provided by the Ministry of Mining, technicians from the China Cooperation Agency and Eximbank visited the Colquiri and Bolívar factories in the last months of 2022 to “certify and guarantee” the financing for the construction of the Zinc refining plant.

The facility will be built as part of the Productive Community Social Economic Model and in the context of the import substitution industrialization policy promoted by the Government of President Luis Arce.

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