Boliden AB

Boliden AB (stylized as Boliden) is a Swedish multinational metals, mining, and smelting company headquartered in Stockholm. The company produces zinc, copper, lead, nickel, silver, and gold, with operations in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Portugal, and Ireland.

The company name comes from the Boliden mine, 30 km northwest of the Swedish town of Skellefteå, where gold was found in 1924. It was once Europe's largest and richest gold mine, but has since 1967 been defunct.

The goods produced are sold both to the group's own smelters and to external customers. Boliden owns and operates Europe's biggest zinc mine at Tara in Ireland (since early 2004), but production began there in 1977, since when over 60 million tonnes of ore have been mined. Boliden also owns Garpenberg, which is Sweden's oldest mine still in operation. Mining at Garpenberg, or extracting metals from the ground, began as early as 375 bc. The mineral-rich Skellefte field lies within the Boliden Area, where almost 30 mines have been opened since production began in the 1920s and where Boliden currently operates the Renström and Kristineberg underground mines and the Maurliden open pit mine. Boliden also owns and operates the Aitik open pit mine, which is one of Europe's biggest copper mines. Metal grades at Aitik are low, but this is compensated for by high productivity levels and efficient milling processes that also exploit the ore's gold and silver content. An expansion project to double Aitik's ore production to 36 million tonnes per annum began in 2007.

Business Area Smelters refines both metal concentrate and secondary materials to produce base and precious metals at smelters in Sweden, Finland and Norway. The main metals are zinc and copper but the production of lead, gold and silver also makes a substantial contribution to the Business Area's revenues. Other products include sulphuric acid and aluminium fluoride. Boliden owns and operates two zinc and two copper smelters and one lead smelter. The Kokkola zinc smelter in Finland is the second largest in Europe and the fifth largest in the world, and mainly produces an alloy used in the galvanising of thin sheet metal. The Odda zinc smelter, which produces zinc for the steel industry and aluminium fluoride for Norway's aluminium industry, is located on the west coast of Norway. The Rönnskär copper smelter is located in the Swedish town of Skelleftehamn and its main products are copper, zinc clinker, lead and precious metals. The smelter, which produces sulphuric acid as a by-product of its operations, also produces metals from electronic scrap and other secondary materials. The Harjavalta copper smelter, located on the west coast of Finland, produces copper cathodes that are mainly sold to manufacturers of semi-finished goods. Other important products include gold, silver and sulphuric acid. The Bergsöe lead smelter outside Landskrona in southern Sweden extracts lead from scrap car batteries. Bergsöe is one of Europe's four biggest players in the lead recycling industry. Approximately 60% of the plant's lead production is sold to the European battery industry, with the remainder used in the manufacture of roofing sheet.