Taiwanese firm Philippine Xin Ye Industry Ltd. Inc. (Xin Ye) reportedly plans to build two more eco-friendly ore-stripping plants in the Philippines next year.
Business World reports Xin Ye eyes to build one in Baguio City, and in Camarines Norte.
The Philippine unit of Taiwan Xinye Precious Metal Technology Co. Ltd. constructed its first ore stripping facility in Valenzuela City in 2017, which costs around $1 million.
The facility uses the company’s patented GP-86, a low-cost environment friendly gold-stripping method that doesn’t make use of toxic chemicals such as mercury and cyanide. The construction of which reportedly costs around $1.2 million.
The company said with the GP-86, the entire ore to gold process will take only a maximum of eight hours. It is way shorter than the dissolution period of two to nearly eight days in the traditional extraction process, which involves the use of the banned chemical mercury.
Toxic chemicals are normally used by small-scale miners, that produce about 70 percent of the yearly gold output in the country, in extracting gold.
Xin Ye Executive Vice-President Steven Liao said their facility can produce 15 metric tonnes of ore daily, according to the Business Mirror report.
“We can make bigger [capacity] depending on the needs of the company. I think we can make as high as 50 metric tons per day,” Liao was quoted in the report as saying.
As the clamor for responsible mining was on the rise last year, Xin Ye announced it was offering mining firms the option to adopt its low-cost GP-86.
The company said several mining firms, including four big mining companies in Mindanao, have already expressed interest to adopt the low-cost technology.
