W Resources Plc, the tungsten, copper and gold, exploration and development company with assets in Spain and Portugal, has awarded the crusher plant contract for its La Parrilla project in Spain to Metso Minerals Portugal, a subsidiary of Metso Corp for €1.2 million. The crusher is a critical component of La Parrilla infrastructure as part of the expansion to 2 Mt/y of ROM which will be able to provide 2,500 – 2,700 t/y of tungsten concentrate.

The crusher will be built in France and delivered to site within 24 weeks, well within the scheduled development time.

The crushing circuit design will minimise the production of tungsten fines which are harder to recover than more coarse material. It is designed to a high level of automation and process control to ensure tight product specifications and to be able to quickly expand from 2 Mt/y to 3.5 Mt/y. This upgrade can be completed within a 90 hour shut down, with the addition of two further cone crushers and the incorporation of a X-Ray ore sorting circuit allowing W to expand its capacity with little operational disruption.

Michael Masterman, Chairman of W Resources commented: “It is great to have agreed the crusher contract award with Metso, a world leading supplier based in Europe. We appreciate it has taken a little bit longer than anticipated, but this is often the unpredictable nature of contract negotiations. Importantly we believe the results in terms of design, quality, price and delivery time will speak for themselves.

“Tungsten prices have increased nearly 25% over the last 12 months with momentum building over the last month which is timely for the development of La Parrilla. Debt financing continues to advance with planned debt financing completion in the second half of 2017.”