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The Heemskirk Group with its headquarters in Melbourne (Australia) has opened the third largest tungsten mine in Europe in the municipalities of Los Santos and Fuenterroble in Salamanca province. The mine will produce 400,000 tons of the mineral per year.

The Heemskirk Group forecasts turnover of around ten million euros a year. For the moment they have signed a 6 year contract with the company Osram Sylvania for the purchase of 100% of the tungsten concentrate.

Experts estimate the useful life of the mine opened this morning to be around 10 years. The company has drawn up a recovery plan so the land is almost completely restored to normal after mineral extraction comes to an end.

The exploitation of the Los Santos-Fuenterroble tungsten mine will be made by the company Daytal Resources S.L. owned by the Heemskirk Group. 65 direct and indirect jobs are forecast to be created.

Open-cast extraction methods will be used for the mining employing five different cuts of depths and heights of between 2 and 30 meters, and covering 160 hectares leased from the Town Hall of Los Santos and from private individuals.

Tungsten has been extracted from the mine since May following an investment of over 13 million euros from August 2006 when the project began.

Tungsten is the hardest metal in the world, three times harder than chromium and titanium, and also has the highest alloying temperature at 3,400 degrees centigrade. It is used for cutting instruments, steel tools, special alloys, light bulb filaments, boring equipment, and even in mobile phones.

The Vice-president and Minister of Economy and Employment of the region, Tomás Villanueva, explained that 'until now in Castilla y León we have always talked about mining in reference to energy resources, above all coal. This mine is however very important because it metallic, and because of the increase in the price of these metals; they have a great future’.

Villanueva highlighted 'the importance of this type of investment for rural communities’ because of the job creation involved, and said the Regional Government had drawn up a plan for the sector including incentives and a mining safety plan.