Boliden Harjavalta has operations in Harjavalta and Pori. The copper anodes produced at the smelter in Harjavalta are refined into copper cathodes at the copper refinery in Pori that also produces gold and silver. The annual production capacity is 210,000 tonnes of anode copper and 155,000 tonnes of cathode copper.
The copper concentrates come primarily from external copper mines in Portugal and in South America. The nickel concentrates are smelted for the customer from its own concentrates on a tolling basis.
A smelter with a long tradition
Boliden Harjavalta has a long tradition in Finnish industrial history and its operations started already in Eastern Finland in 1936. 1944, during the Second World War, the business and the personnel were moved to Harjavalta where the first copper casting was made only six months later in 1945. The copper refinery started its operation in Pori in 1941.
An entirely new and energy-efficiently revolutionary flash smelting method for copper concentrates was developed in Harjavalta and introduced in 1949. The flash smelting method has been under continuous development during the years, and is today the most widely used smelting method of copper concentrates in the world.
Boliden Harjavalta has approximately 382 employees.