Essa Australia Strengthens Russian Base

With its vast mineral and metals reserves, Russia is one of the world’s key developing markets with high growth potential for international mining services businesses.

In fact, Russia looks set to become the world’s leading gold producing region within the next several years and is likely to surpass South Africa as the leading producer well before the end of the decade.

Increasing investment from both Western companies and within the country has led some industry observers to state that the Russian gold sector has embarked on a new era.

Essa has for some time recognised that the Russian resources market would yield signifi cant opportunities for its diverse product range. The company has now made a strong commitment to servicing this vibrant market.

Over the past 20 years Essa has led the way in the development of sample preparation equipment for the world’s exploration and mining industries. Until recently Russia was only one of a handful of countries where their industry-standard equipment was relatively unknown.

As a result of an active marketing campaign over the past year Essa has made exciting breakthroughs in the Russian mineral laboratory equipment market.

The nation’s largest domestic gold producer, Polyus, has pioneered the use of Essa’s newly developed large capacity coarse pulverising mills at their Olympiad mine near Krasnoyarsk. The major steel maker, Evraz, is using a unique automated crushing and grinding system (pictured) at their iron ore mine in Kachkanar.

The Russian market is unlike others in that it has remained independent in the development of its sample preparation processes and has not had signifi cant infl uence from global industry trends and practices.

This has required a thorough presentation of the Essa equipment range to the Russian mining sector with an emphasis on detailed explanation of the advantages of large sample preparation.

Many of the processes Essa assumed as standard practice in other markets have required greater clarity and demonstration by technical performance and written reports.

Nevertheless the acceptance of the Essa products, and in particular the large sample pulverising equipment, has been very encouraging.

With major expenditure forecast for the next ten years, the Russian mining market is recognising that quality and operating costs are increasingly important. The use and acceptance of leading edge equipment supplied by foreign manufacturers such as Essa is flourishing.

Essa has established a strong client base in Russia, both in gold and other mineral sectors, and this is expected to grow as new clients become aware of Essa products and the resulting benefi ts they provide.