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Seminar - Investment and Export opportunities in Mining and Mineral sector
Date: November 4th2014
ICMM – Independent Commission for Mines and Minerals (
Short Review about the Mineral/Mining Industry of Kosovo
(Sali Mulaj,Head of Geology Department, ICMM )
Kosovo owns a variety of very important metallic and non-metallic raw material resources.
Especially, deposits of lead and zinc, as well as nickel have to be mentioned. In addition, construction raw materials deposits are important.
Kosovo does have very important resources of lead and zinc in the North and the Northeast of the country. The most important deposits are Stantërg, Bellobërdë, Hajvali, Novobërdë and Crnac. The resumption and the expansion of the mining industry are planned for the near future as well. Corresponding preparations are already under way. Altogether, the estimated resources are approx. 25 million tons with high contents of lead, zinc and silver.
Nickel is another very important resource. The lateritic nickel ores are characterized by a high thickness. They have been exploited until the end of the 1990s at three large open pits
(Çikatovë, Gllaviçicë). They are well explored and are situated in infrastructural well-developed areas. Beside nickel, cobalt is of importance, too. In the last century, 7,000 tons of nickel per year has been produced near Gllogovc.
Kosovo also comes with large resources of magnesite, at the central and eastern part of the country. Since 1962, magnesite has been exploited at Strezovc, first by open pit mining, later by underground mining. A processing plant for the production of various grades of magnesia (MgO) operated from 1974 until circa 1990. At the Golesh, near Magurë, high quality magnesite has been mined at an open pit, already since 1920.
During the 1960s, also underground mining was applied. A processing plant was built 1973.
The two mentioned deposits contain several million tons of magnesite.
Bauxite also plays a large role for Kosovo. The overall resources, which are mainly limited to the area around the Grebnik Mountains, are estimated at 1.7 million tons. More than 50 different deposits are known. In the early years, mining was done, intensively. Per annum, 100,000 to 200,000 tons of bauxite were exploited and exported. At the moment, mining is dormant.
During the early decades, chromium was of territorial importance. The pits in the Southwest of Kosovo have been of especially importance. The thickness of their ore beds is up to 5 m.
Chromium ore concentrates were produced at Devë since 1949. There, also Albanian ore was processed. Mining was discontinued in 1991.
Occurrences of lignite are of extraordinary strategic importance since they enable Kosovo to cover the need of the country to produce energy for the whole region. According to available estimates, lignite resources amount about 11 billion tons. Exploitation is carried out inside theKosovo basin, Southwest of Prishtinë.
Of increasing importance for Kosovo are the non-metallic raw materials. They are of strategic importance for present and future economic development.
At the present, carbonate rocks rank first among the construction industry. They are used, for instance, for road constructions. Near Kaçanik, a cement factory does exist. After reconstruction, this factory restarted its production in 2003 being dimensioned for a yearly production of 600,000 tons.
Gravel and sand can mainly be found in the floodplains of the major rivers and are used as concrete add-on.
Silicate hard rock construction raw materials are little used, relatively. Their main use is road constructions, too.
Decoration - and dimension stones have been exploited only to a small amount, until now.
There are several interesting mining areas for marble, pyroclastic rocks, travertine and pyroxenite.
Currently, in Kosovo clay material is mainly used to benefit fine material for production of bricks. In addition, partly high quality materials like kaolin and bentonite are known, too.
Their usage has not been utilized completely, yet. In the context of the project “Compilation of the Kosovo Quarry Plan“, carried out at present, the construction minerals were captured and collected for the major part of Kosovo and are subjected to a thorough assessment for its future ordered.
Present days there are a lot of companies running exploration and mining activities on different mineral commodities.
-Metallic minerals (exploration) 9 licenses
-Metallic minerals (mining) 46 licenses
-Industrial minerals (exploration) 11 licenses
-Industrial minerals (mining) 11 licenses
-Energetic minerals - lignite (mining) 2 licenses
-Gravel and sand (exploration) 5 licenses
-Industrial minerals (exploration) 20 licenses
-Hard rocks (exploration) 59 licenses
-Hard rocks (mining) 155 licenses