Talc mining operations

Field teams walk the mountain slopes and rock faces to trace talc-bearing zones. Geologists record structure and rock orientation with compass-clinometers, sample the white and pale zones, and log where the talc body runs.

This survey work decides where adits are driven. It also decides which faces are worked, so the mine takes the purest material and leaves waste rock in place.

Where the talc outcrops, it is worked from the surface. Where it runs into the hillside, adits are cut into the rock face and supported with timber, with rail track and mine carts to bring material out.

The company's supply-chain records describe both open and tunnel mining for Pakistani talc, and open mining for Afghan talc.

Inside the workings, crews break the white talc from the face and gather it on the chamber floor. Grey or stained rock is kept separate from white talc at the face, so less sorting is needed later.

Survey teams measure the adits as they advance and inspect the walls. This keeps the working on the talc body and checks ground conditions.

Broken talc is spread out in walled yards. Workers in hard hats and safety vests pick through it by hand, taking out foreign rock and separating the lumps by colour and size.

Inspectors check the sorted piles before the lumps are filled into bulk bags. Hand sorting is still the most reliable way to separate the colour grades — white, grey, green and coffee — that buyers specify.

Sorted lumps are loaded onto trucks at the mine stock areas. Afghan talc moves through the company's stock area and processing plant in Jalalabad and crosses at Torkham. Pakistani talc goes from its mine stock areas direct to Peshawar.

In Peshawar the talc is stocked and segregated by grade. From there it is either ground into powder or sent on as lumps to the Karachi warehouse for packing and export.