Aitik, situated outside the town of Gällivare in the very north of Sweden, is Sweden’s largest copper mine. Aitik is also the most efficient open pit copper mine in the world. The deposit consists of chalcopyrite and pyrite yielding copper, gold and silver. Approximately 40 M tonnes of ore is mined and concentrated here every year. The open pit is 3 km long, 1.1 km wide and 450 meters deep – so far.
Aitik is also home to some of the largest machines in the world. Here you’ll find rock trucks that weigh 570 tonnes when fully loaded – the wheels alone are 4 meters in diameter. There are shovels with buckets that can hold up to 45 cubic meters of rock, wheel loaders that weigh 190 tonnes and drilling machines that weigh 181 tonnes and drill depths of 16 meters. Large amounts of waste rock must be removed in order to produce the ore. Much of this waste rock is crushed and recycled for the construction of roads and as ballast material in cement.
Although the deposit was discovered at the beginning of the 1930’s, its exploitation only became possible in the 1960’s, thanks to modern mining equipment and technology. The mining capacity was gradually tuned up through the large Aitik Expansion in 2010, to reach a level of 39 million tonnes ore per year from 2014 and on. Aitik employs over 770 people and is the largest private employer in the municipality of Gällivare.
