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Rehabilitation of Tailings Dams

Rehabilitation of Tailings Dams (After rehabilitation)

Rehabilitation of Tailings Dams (After rehabilitation)

The business in which SMM engages exerts an extremely large impact on surrounding regions. Earning the trust of local communities is a key prerequisite for the continuation of our business. At the former Besshi Copper Mine in Ehime Prefecture, we started reforestation in the Meiji Era. This spirit of co-existing with the global environment and society through our business, carried down ceaselessly from our predecessors in Sumitomo, is a spirit that even today we revere and put into practice in countries around the world.

Coral Bay Nickel Corporation (CBNC) produces mixed sulfide (MS) as an intermediate raw material for nickel and cobalt products at Palawan Island in the Philippines. The company is engaged in the rehabilitation of tailings dams, which are facilities for accumulating the neutralized and stabilized unneeded mineral solids resulting from mineral processing (the process of separating ores) and from metal smelting and refining, and separating the water from them.

Currently at CBNC, the first tailings dam has reached capacity and a second is in use. Rehabilitation is the activity to return greenery to a tailings dam that has played out its role.

Rehabilitation of Tailings Dams (Before rehabilitation)

Rehabilitation of Tailings Dams (Before rehabilitation)

The objective of rehabilitation is to establish a self-supporting, sustainable ecosystem. We undertake a number of measures, such as improving the soil, and have restored an expanse of greenery to land that was barren, reddish-brown soil in 2010. However, we go beyond simple greening to cultivating vegetables, fruit trees, and other plants to make the land usable for agriculture and other activities that support livelihoods. Rehabilitation also plays an important role in the creation of employment in the area of operation, with many members of local communities becoming involved in the work.

Award ceremony for the 2016 Presidential Mineral Industry Environmental Award
Award ceremony for the Outstanding Community Project Award for 2016
Raising saplings, by the local community