YEKATERINBURG. March 26 (Interfax) - State company Kaliningrad Amber Factory on Friday launched an emerald recovery plant at the Malyshevskoye emerald deposit in Sverdlovsk Region, Valery Ustinov, the director of Malyshevo, a company Kaliningrad Amber set up to revive the mine, told Interfax.

Kaliningrad Amber began mining emeralds at Malyshevskoye last December 2, and plans to invest 2.5 billion rubles in the development of the deposit.

Ustinov said earlier that the mine had produced about 9,000 tonnes of emerald ore in the 2.5 months from December 2011 through mid-February 2012. There are plans to mine about 100,000 tonnes of ore in 2012, from which the company expects to recover about 300 kg of emeralds. Investment will total 200 million rubles this year.

Kaliningrad Amber plans to bring the mine up to design capacity of 400,000 tonnes of ore per year by 2018.

In May 2011, following a tender, the Russian government ordered that the license to Malyshevskoye be granted to Kaliningrad Amber.

Kaliningrad Amber had been obtaining short-term licenses to Malyshevskoye since 2008, but in August 2010 the Federal Subsurface Resources Agency refused to issue a new permit because the mine had still not begun production. However, Kaliningrad Amber management said mining had begun in May 2010. The mine had an inventory of about 15 kg of emeralds when production stopped.

Malyshevskoye is the biggest emerald deposit in Eurasia. It contains beryllium besides emeralds. The deposit has C1 reserves of 32,614.1 kilograms and C2 reserves 23,803 kilograms of emeralds, and