The latest issue of International Mining Project News, out today, has reports on 18 prefeasibility studies, nine feasibility studies, 22 projects in development, seven new mines that have gone into production, three existing mines that are expanding, two merger and acquisition announcements, and many new appointments to new positions.
The report covers 23 gold projects, 10 copper projects, seven iron ore, six coal, five silver projects, four on rare earth elements, three nickel projects, two projects on uranium, graphite, mineral sands, chrome, vanadium, and lithium, and one project each on niobium, cobalt, bauxite, tungsten, tin, titanium, phosphate, neodymium, and borax. This fortnightly project watch is a great way of keeping up to date with your peers – other mining companies, other consultants or other engineering companies. These issues build into a global mine project overview. If you are a supplier – it is full of potential sales leads.
Peak Resources has successfully produced its second separated high purity rare earth oxide. The neodymium – praseodymium oxide was produced from a bulk sample of mineralisation from the company’s 100% owned Ngualla rare earth project in Tanzania. The successful production is an important milestone as the high value strategic commodity, used in the manufacture of permanent magnets, is forecast to provide over 50% of Ngualla’s project revenue.
Cokal has identified potential additional seams at its Bumi Barito Mineral (BBM) project in the central Kalimantan regions of Indonesia. The ‘KLM’ seams contain high quality coking coal and lie adjacent to BHP Billitons’s Juloi tenement, straddling the Barito River. These new potential seams forms a significant portion of the JORC compliant exploration target announced by Cokal in June.
Great Western Minerals Group’s subsidiary, Less Common Metals (LCM), has successfully produced neodymium metal from oxide using an electrolytic reduction process. LCM ran the new electrolytic cell in full production mode meeting all environmental, health and safety compliance standards. Ian Higgins, Managing Director of LCM: “This very successful production run follows our extensive engineering design and technical studies. Importantly, this is one of only a few examples of electrolytic metal production outside of China. This capability enables us to expand discussions with raw material and consumable suppliers.”
Coal production has started at the Kestrel mine extension, a $2 billion dollar project near Emerald in central Queensland. The extension will add 20 years of life of the Rio Tinto managed Kestrel mine, which is the company’s only underground coal operation. John Coughlan, Kestrel Mine General Manager Operations said “After four years of construction, seeing the longwall cutting coal is an exciting milestone and marks the start of a long future for Kestrel mine. We process high quality coking coal for export using the longwall method and expect to see our first shipment from this new area of the mine leave Australia in the coming weeks.
Gold Resource is currently expanding its Aguila mill, and recently completed a new ball mill foundation, for which the mill plates are now being installed in preparation for final ball mill installation. The new mill feed conveyor is on site as well and preparations for its installation are underway. All the new concrete in the flotation area is complete in preparation for installation of the new flotation cells.
Boxxer Gold has signed a non-binding letter of intent with Konnex Resources to acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of Konnex. Konnex is a private Canadian metals exploration company that seeks to identify and acquire undervalued projects located in low risk jurisdictions. Konnex has a highly experienced board and management team with collectively over 100 years of experience in exploration, development, mine management, and project sourcing worldwide.
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