Almonty Industries Inc has announced the finalisation of the plant layout and configuration upon the fixing of the location of the backfill plant at the site of the Sangdong tungsten mine in Gangwon Province, Almonty’s wholly-owned mine in South Korea. The Sangdong backfill plant has been prepared and designed by Upgrade Mining Solutions (Europe), a specialist engineering firm in tailings paste fill.

The location of the backfill plant of approximately 1,300 m² is determined at a 730 m altitude near the Baegun adit, sitting atop of Taebaek Level (680 m altitude) and Sangdong Level (656 m altitude), where mining activities for initial years will be focused. The higher altitude will enable reduced operational expenses through gravity pumping of tailings and a simplified and cost-effective backfilling reticulation system.

This location is also closer to the additional deposit identified as upside potential by ex-Korea Tungsten and the Korea Resource Corporation, ensuring the effectiveness of backfilling not only the targeted stopes of the Company’s NI43-101 indicated and inferred resources already defined, but also the future stopes of the continued deposit in the western direction which was identified through drilling campaigns in 1980s.

Almonty’s Chairman, President and CEO Lewis Black said: “We are pleased to announce the completion of the plant layout of the Sangdong Mine with the finishing touch of fixing the location of the backfill plant. The paste fill plant at the Sangdong Mine will ensure the smallest possible footprint meeting the national and international environmental standards. It is also intended to stabilise the new and existing stopes enabling the mining safety which is the foremost and uncompromised objective of Almonty. Together with the completion of basic engineering works on the critical equipment and process flowsheet by Metso (Europe), the Sangdong Mine is now moving towards the development phase.”