In December 2017, Redpath Australia was selected to be the Site Operator at Glencore’s Lady Loretta high-grade Pb-Zn (lead-zinc) orebody which will be mined at a rate of 1.6 Mt/y with the scope of work including the entire underground and surface operations, along with the associated facilities management on site.

Redpath reports that to date its work at Glencore’s Lady Loretta mine has delivered excellent physical results, exceeding all key targets for Glencore. “Significant planning and teamwork, especially in areas such as recommissioning the paste plant, batch plant and crushing plants has made this possible. There have been many learnings during the mobilisation/commissioning period, but overall, Redpath is meeting or exceeding the client’s expectations and is on track to meet the nameplate capacity of 1.6 Mt/y of ore crushed by the end of December 2018. A key process implemented is having quarterly “alignment sessions” involving all key Redpath and Glencore management so that all aspects of how the project is operating are maturely debated, and actions put in place to improve in the subsequent quarter. These sessions flush out any uncertainty or issues present, and ensure that the management team align and work together to the common goal.”

The mining method at Lady Loretta is conventional sub-level open stoping (a slot is opened up using a Redbore 30 raisebore raise drill) with paste used to fill the void upon completion. Ore is removed by Sandvik LH621 loaders (LHDs), using the Sandvik AutoMine system and is trucked to the surface ROM using Epiroc MT65 underground trucks. The surface crushing plant is then loaded, operated, and maintained in addition to loading the Glencore-controlled roadtrains which deliver the crushed ore to the Mt Isa processing plant.

“The excellent work that Glencore did in setting the mine up with underground WiFi, has allowed Redpath the opportunity to embrace some of the modern technologies available in underground mining. These include Sandvik’s AutoMine which provides for automated tramming of underground loaders allowing operation over shift changes and optimised performance. Mobile fleet monitoring has commenced through Certiq and OptiMine which help operators to operate equipment better and data analysis for continuous improvement. Plodtrack, for recording shift by shift mine activity, is the start of a move toward real time information capture.”