The Gaisky Gorno-Obogatitelny Kombinat (Gaisky Mining and Processing Combine) is situated some 280 kilometres east of Orenburg at the far southern tip of the Ural mountains, where the steppe starts to give way to gentle foothills.

We are 752 metres underground when a deep rumbling echoes from far within the underground labyrinth like the growl of an unseen beast. Dust dances in the light from a miner’s helmet lamp as he shows the way forward through a dimly lit cavern where reflections glance off pools of muddy gunmetal-grey slush underfoot.

Here in Russia’s second-biggest copper sulphide mine, we’re looking for the mine’s freight-carrying vehicles – the Sandvik LH series loaders, the DD310-40 electro-hydraulic drilling rigs (former Axera 5-140s) and DL410 (former Solo 7-15C) production drill rig.

The deeper we push into the winding tunnels, the harder the going gets. The pungent acrid odour evident close to the pit shaft – a swift three-minute ride down from the top in a cast iron box – gives way to a strong breeze.

Twin headlamps pierce the gloom ahead and a Sandvik LH410 (former Toro 007) groans by, tugging a load of grey-green rock, its orange-painted body scraped and scarred from years of round-the-clock labour. The machine is known to the miners as a PDM, or “pogruzо dostavochnaya machina” – a freight-carrying vehicle.

“This is the workhorse of the mine,” says Igor Yaroslavtsev, a 52-year-old mechanic who has worked down the mine for 16 years.

The vehicles have a design lifetime of four years, but the mine’s mechanics are skilled at keeping them running for much longer.

“They’re good solid machines, and if nothing serious breaks down after the first four years, they’re good for another four,” Igor says, his grimy mustachioed face breaking into a grin.

Their durability, simplicity and familiarity to the men who use them are all factors in making Sandvik machines the No. 1 choice for underground drilling and loading equipment at the mine, which is second only to Siberia’s Norilsk as a copper producer in Russia.

“There is nothing to compare with foreign equipment in Russian mining, and we’ve long used Sandvik equipment, which is strong and well suited to the conditions in our mine,” says Gaisky GOK’s director Aleksandr Saraskin.

Sandvik supplied more than half of the drilling, loading and freight machines used – 45 machines in all – and over 90 percent of the heavy machines that weigh more than 10 tonnes.

Saraskin has a shopping list for new equipment that he wants to buy under a major modernization scheme for which the mine’s owner UMMC (Urals Mining and Metallurgical Company) plans to spend 138 million euros.

Saraskin observes that, at 52, he is just a couple of years older than the mine.

The facility was formally founded in May 1959 along with the town that bears its name, Gai, in a region that until then was virgin steppe.

You get an idea of its importance from the fact that in Soviet times it was awarded the Order of Lenin, and it is still formally known as Gaisky GOK imeni Leninskogo Komsomola – “named after the Lenin Young Communists League.”

The modernization plan has been delayed by the worldwide economic slump. Copper prices fell from 7,000 US dollars a tonne to USD 2,800 between 2007 and 2008, although they have now recovered to around USD 5,000.

Gaisky GOK, like the rest of UMMC’s 47 enterprises in 11 Russian regions, has felt the pinch.

The mine was forced to lay off around 800 workers, and its plans to buy equipment were put on hold. Still, the mine turned a profit in May 2009, and Saraskin expects to buy new equipment in the next year or two to help raise crude ore production to 8 million tonnes a year from 5.6 million.

Competitive pricing and long-established service relationships will play an important part in purchasing decisions, Saraskin says.

In a mine with two dozen horizontal tunnels running off a shaft that goes down as far as 1,360 metres to the crude ore reserves, increasing production comes down to an equation that balances cost against efficiency of equipment.

Currently, Gaisky GOK’s annual pure metal output is around 79,000 tonnes of copper (its concentrate contains an average of 18.5 percent of the metal) and 6,000 tonnes of zinc. In the half century since it opened, Gaisky GOK has produced more than 4.2 million tonnes of copper, nearly 2.2 million tonnes of zinc and precisely 287,469.44 kilograms of gold.

These figures can help one understand Gaisky GOK’s contribution to the strong position of holding company UMMC in the metals market. UMMC produces around 40 percent of Russia’s cathode copper, controls a quarter of the domestic market for nonferrous rolled products and has more than half the European market for copper powders.

“We have the second-richest reserve of copper ore in Russia, with reserves sufficient for another 100 years,” Saraskin says.

“Even if we are able to increase production with bigger and better machines and meet our new targets, we’ll still have enough for another half century in Gai.”