Asarel Medet ( bg, Асарел Медет) is an enormous copper extracting and processing factory located at 11 km to the northwest of the town of

Panagyurishte Panagyurishte ( bg, Панагюрище, also transliterated ''Panagjurište'', ) is a town in Pazardzhik Province, Southern Bulgaria, situated in a small valley in the Sredna Gora mountains. It is 91 km east of Sofia, 43 km north of P ...

in the

Pazardzhik Province Pazardzhik Province ( bg, Област Пазарджик ''Oblast Pazardzhik'', former name Pazardzhik okrug) is a province in Southern Bulgaria, named after its administrative and industrial centre - the city of Pazardzhik. The territory is ...

Bulgaria Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedon ...

. It consists of two main factories: Medet which operates from 1964 and Asarel which began operation in 1989. The number of employees has been greatly reduced since the 1990s from over 5,000 to 2,500. It extracts over 13 million tons of copper ore every year and produces copper concentrate which is sold to the copper refineries at

Pirdop Pirdop ( bg, Пирдоп ) is a town located in South-West Bulgaria in Pirdop Municipality of Sofia Province in the southeastern part of the Zlatitsa - Pirdop Valley at 670 m above sea level. It is surrounded by the Balkan Range (also known as t ...

. The ore also contains

molybdenum Molybdenum is a chemical element with the symbol Mo and atomic number 42 which is located in period 5 and group 6. The name is from Neo-Latin ''molybdaenum'', which is based on Ancient Greek ', meaning lead, since its ores were confused with lea ...

nickel Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive but large pieces are slow to ...

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile met ...

silver Silver is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag (from the Latin ', derived from the Proto-Indo-European wikt:Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₂erǵ-, ''h₂erǵ'': "shiny" or "white") and atomic number 47. A soft, whi ...

. During the past several years some €40,000,000 have been invested in environmentally friendly technologies in order to preserve the nature of

Sredna Gora Sredna Gora ( bg, Средна гора ) is a mountain range in central Bulgaria, situated south of and parallel to the Balkan Mountains and extending from the Iskar to the west and the elbow of Tundzha north of Yambol to the east. Sredna Gora i ...

in the area relatively untouched.

External links

Asarel Medet

Map of the region
{{coord, 42, 32, 31, N, 24, 9, 6, E, region:BG, display=title Copper mining companies of Bulgaria Panagyurishte Buildings and structures in Pazardzhik Province