Outotec has signed a contract with Chilean Codelco for the design and delivery of an effluent treatment plant for Codelco's new Mina Ministro Hales project close to Calama in Chile. The contract price is approximately EUR 18 million.

Outotec's scope of delivery covers the turn key supply of the plant including basic and detail engineering, supply of proprietary and process equipment, installation, start up services and training.

The new effluent treatment plant complements earlier EUR 116 million contract Outotec made with Codelco in 2010 for designing and delivering a copper concentrate roasting plant, gas cleaning system and sulfuric acid plant. The new plant will treat the effluents of those processes. The whole plant will have an annual capacity up to 550,000 tonnes of concentrate, and is scheduled to be commissioned in early 2013.

Pertti Korhonen president & CEO of Outotec said that "Our goal is to adapt our expertise and technologies also to adjacent industries such as the energy industry and industrial water treatment. This way we can offer our customers ever more comprehensive life cycle solutions that cover also effluent treatment and gas cleaning of the processes as in this supplementary contract we signed with Codelco."