Tag Archives: copper

PYBAR extends stay at AIC Mines’ Eloise copper mine

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PYBAR, part of Metarock Group Ltd, has been rewarded for its last two years of service at the Eloise copper mine in Queensland, Australia, having now been awarded a four-year services contract.

Since arriving on site in 2020, PYBAR says it has set the standard in safe and efficient delivery of underground mining services and will continue delivering as it embarks on a new four-year mining services contract.

Having safely completed nearly 6.5 km of development at the high-grade Eloise copper mine over the past two years, PYBAR was invited to participate in a competitive tender process for the new contract earlier this year and was awarded the mining services contract at Eloise by mine owner, AIC Mines Ltd, for a further four-year term.

The new contract, with the additional scope of shotcrete services, will see PYBAR on site at Eloise through to 2026, and includes the development of declines, level accesses, ore drives, stockpiles and infrastructure, providing all facilities, services, labour, supervision, administration, construction plant and materials.

Forming part of the PYBAR fleet of mining equipment on site is a new Elphinstone CT WR820 10 cu.m agitator (pictured below), as well as two twin boom jumbos, two LHDs, a charge rig and a shotcrete spray rig.

PYBAR’s CEO, James Glover, said: “We are very pleased to have been awarded the extension of the Eloise project which is a testament to the work that has been delivered on site to date by our team at Eloise. AIC is a growth focused resources company and it’s pleasing to be able to extend our term for another four years and be a part of that growth journey.”

The team of over 50 skilled PYBAR personnel on site has kicked off the new Eloise contract well, setting the standard for the remainder of the contract with a near-record month of 412 m of development achieved in July.

AIC Mines said in November that it was targeting production of approximately 12,500 t of copper and 6,000 oz of gold in concentrate in its 2023 financial year to June 30, 2023.

ABB, Boliden target low carbon footprint copper for EMS equipment, electric motors

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ABB says it is working with Boliden to build a strategic co-operation to use low carbon footprint copper in its electromagnetic stirring (EMS) equipment and high-efficiency electric motors.

The aim is to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while driving the transition to a more circular economy, ABB says.

The partnership with Boliden forms a part of ABB’s strategic ambition to reduce the environmental impact of raw materials used in its products by replacing them with lower carbon alternatives, it says. Apart from using recycled copper, ABB has committed to increase the use of recycled electric steel (e-steel) and recycled aluminum.

The move is also an important step in closing the circularity loop that has already seen ABB designing its motors to be up to 98% recyclable, with the remaining 2% of materials available to be incinerated for heat recovery. Recycling copper, aluminum and steel offers energy savings of between 75-95% compared with virgin production, according to the company.

Ola Norén, Head of Metallurgy Products, Process Industries, ABB, said: “As a part of ABB’s 2030 sustainability strategy, our target is for 80% of our products and solutions to be covered by a circularity approach. The work with Boliden is an important step towards this goal. By taking stock of the delivery by the end of this year we’ll ensure that all our metallurgy products use recycled hollow copper conductors from 2023.”

Ulf Hellstrom, Managing Director at ABB Motion, Sweden, added: “We want to enable a more sustainable and resource-efficient future, and with this collaboration our customers can not only decarbonise by upgrading to energy-efficient motors but will also be able to install ABB technology that has an improved environmental footprint thanks to Boliden’s copper. This is an excellent example of the circular economy in practice.”

The co-operation includes ABB placing the first order for Boliden’s certified recycled copper through Finnish metals manufacturing specialist Luvata. Hollow conductor wire made from the material will be used in ABB’s EMS products for both steel and aluminum manufacturing.

Furthermore, as of 2023, ABB will purchase Boliden’s low-carbon and recycled copper to cover the demand for its IE5 Ultra-Premium Efficiency SynRM and e-mobility motors produced in Europe, it says. The two companies have also signed a memorandum of understanding that will see ABB supporting Boliden in identifying inefficient low-voltage motors across its operating units. These motors can then be replaced with high-efficiency motors within ABB’s take back upcycling framework, with the old motors recycled to provide raw material for Boliden’s recycled copper.

Boliden has developed low-carbon copper that is mined using fossil-free energy and also produces copper using secondary raw material from recycled products. The carbon footprint of these products is 65% lower than the industry average, according to the miner.

A typical 75 kW motor weighing 650 kg might include 80 kg of copper. Using Boliden’s copper saves approximately 200 kg of CO₂ emissions for every one of these motors manufactured, ABB says. Each stirrer has up to 2,700 kg of copper, saving up to 6,700 kg of CO2 per stirrer.

Metso Outotec to deliver anode casting shops to major copper producers

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Metso Outotec says it has received orders for four anode casting shops from major copper producers in the USA, China and Africa that come with a total value of around €18 million ($19.2 million).

In each of the projects, Metso Outotec’s scope of delivery includes anode casting shops with engineering and state-of-the-art technology.

Harri Talvensaari, Senior Sales Manager, Smelting at Metso Outotec, said: “Today, most of the world’s copper anodes are produced with Metso Outotec’s proprietary anode casting technology. We have delivered over 100 anode casting shops around the world, and our frontrunning technology is used globally by the leading copper producers. Our anode casting shops are compatible with different types of smelting technologies, enabling reliable operation and consistent throughput.”

Metso Outotec’s fully electric anode casting shops feature a high level of automation, which ensures premium anode quality with excellent weight accuracy and a low reject rate combined with high capacity and availability, the company says. Metso Outotec also offers a variety of modular upgrades for existing installations, including equipment, automation, services and digital tools, like the on-line MouldSense™ system.

Taseko Mines using innovation to increase production and efficiencies

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The Taseko Mines story is indicative of the current environment miners find themselves in – maximise productivity to grow margins at existing operations or invest in innovative new methods of extracting critical metals that come with a reduced footprint.

The Vancouver-based company is pursuing both options at the two main assets on its books – the Gibraltar copper mine in British Columbia, Canada, and its Florence Copper project in Arizona, USA.

Gibraltar, owned 75% by Taseko, initially started up in 1972 as a 36,000 t/d operation. It was shut down in 1998 due to low copper prices before Taseko restarted it in 2004. In the years since, the company has invested over $800 million in the mine, increasing the throughput rate to 85,000 tons per day (77,111 t/d), where it’s been operating at since 2014.

The asset now sits as the second largest open-pit copper mine in Canada – with life of mine average annual production of 130 MIb (59,000 t) of copper and 2.5 MIb of molybdenum.

Stuart McDonald, President and CEO of the company, says the company continues to work on the trade-off of upping throughput – potentially past the nameplate capacity – and improving metallurgical recoveries at the operation.

This became apparent in the latest quarterly results, when Taseko reported an average daily throughput of 89,400 tons/d over the three-month period alongside “higher than normal” mining dilution.

The company believes Gibraltar can improve on both counts – mill throughput and mining dilution.

“We were optimistic coming into the new pit (Gibraltar Pit) that, based on the historical data, we could go above 85,000 tons/d as we got settled in and mined the softer ore,” McDonald told IM. “We still believe there are opportunities to go beyond that level, but, at some point, it becomes an optimisation and trade-off between throughput and recoveries.

“In our business, we’re not interested in maximising mill throughput; we’re interested in maximising copper production.”

On the dilution front, McDonald believes the problem will lessen as the mining moves to deeper benches in the Gibraltar Pit.

“As we go deeper, the ore continuity improves, so we hope the dilution effect will continue to improve too,” he said.

“The dilution rate is still not quite where we want it to be, so it’s a matter of looking at our operating practices carefully and following through a grade reconciliation process from our geological model through to assays from our blast holes, assays into the shovel bucket and all the way through to the mill.”

‘Assays into the shovel bucket’?

McDonald explained: “We do use ShovelSense® technology on two of our shovels, so that helps us assess the grade of the material in the shovel bucket.”

To this point, the company has leveraged most value from this XRF-based technology, developed by MineSense, when deployed on shovels situated in the boundaries between ore and waste. This offers the potential to reclassify material deemed to be ‘waste’ in the block model as ‘ore’ and vice versa, improving the grade of the material going to the mill and reducing processing of waste.

ShovelSense has been successful in carrying out this process with accuracy at other copper mines in British Columbia, including Teck Resources’ Highland Valley Copper operations and Copper Mountain Mining’s namesake operation.

McDonald concluded on this grade reconciliation process: “We just have to make sure we are tracing the material through all of those steps and not losing anything along the way. Gibraltar is a big earthmoving operation, so we must continue to keep the material flowing as well as look at the head grade.”

A different type of recovery

In Arizona at Florence Copper, Taseko has a different proposition on its hands.

Florence is a project that, when fully ramped up, could produce 40,000 t of high-quality copper cathode annually for the US domestic market.

It will do this by using a metal extraction and recovery method rarely seen in the copper space – in-situ recovery (ISR).

The planned ISR facility consists of an array of injection and recovery wells that will be used to inject a weak acid solution (raffinate – 99.5% water, 0.5% acid) into copper oxide ore and recover the copper-laden solution (pregnant leach solution) for processing into pure copper cathode sheets. The mine design is based on the use of five spot well patterns, with each pattern consisting of four extraction wells in a 100 ft (30.5 m) grid plus a central injection well. This mine outline and associated infrastructure comes with a modest capital expenditure figure of $230 million.

The company has been testing the ISR technology at Florence to ensure the recovery process works and the integrity of the wells remains intact.

Since acquiring Florence Copper in November 2014, Taseko has advanced the project through the permitting, construction and operating phase of the Phase 1 Production Test Facility (PTF). The PTF, a $25 million test facility, consists of 24 wells and the SX/EW plant. It commenced operations in December 2018.

Over the course of 18 months, Taseko evaluated the operational data, confirmed project economics and demonstrated the ability to produce high-quality copper cathode with stringent environmental guidelines at the PTF, the company says.

McDonald reflected: “We produced over 1 MIb [of copper] over this timeframe and then switched over from a copper production cycle into testing our ability to rinse the orebody and restore the mining area back to the permitted conditions.

“We’re proving our ability to do the mining and the reclamation, which we think is a critical de-risking step for the project.”

Over an 18-month period, Taseko produced 1 MIb from the ISR test facility at Florence

Taseko says Florence Copper is expected to have the lowest energy and greenhouse gas-intensity (GHG) of any copper producer in North America, with McDonald saying the operation’s carbon footprint will mostly be tied to the electricity consumption required.

“Our base case is to use electricity from the Arizona grid, which has a combination of renewables, nuclear and gas-fired power plants,” he said. “In the longer-term, there are opportunities at Florence to switch to completely 100% renewable sources, with the most likely candidate being solar power.

“At that point, with renewable energy powering our plant, we could be producing a copper product with close to zero carbon associated with it.”

Gibraltar has also been labelled as a “low carbon intensity operation” by Skarn Associates who, in a 2020 report, said the operation ranked in the lowest quartile compared with other copper mines throughout the world when it comes to Scope 1 and 2 emissions.

When it comes to the question of when Florence could start producing, Taseko is able to reflect on recent successful permitting activities.

In December 2020, the company received the Aquifer Protection Permit from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, with the only other permit required prior to construction being the Underground Injection Control (UIC) permit from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

On September 29, the EPA concluded its public comment period on the draft UIC it issued following a virtual public hearing that, according to Taseko, demonstrated strong support for the Florence Copper project among local residents, business organisations, community leaders and state-wide organisations. Taseko says it has reviewed all the submitted comments and is confident they will be fully addressed by the EPA during its review, prior to issuing the final UIC permit.

Future improvements

In tandem with its focus on permitting and construction at Florence, and upping performance at Gibraltar, the company has longer-term aims for its operations.

For instance, the inclusion of more renewables to get Florence’s copper production to carbon-neutral status could allow the company to benefit from an expected uptick in demand for a product with such credentials. If the demand side requirements for copper continue to evolve in the expected manner, it is easy to see Taseko receiving a premium for its low- or no-carbon product over the 20-year mine life.

At Gibraltar, it is also pursuing a copper cathode strategy that could lead to the re-start of its SX-EW plant. In the past, this facility processed leachate from oxide waste dumps at the operation.

“As we get into 2024, we see some additional oxide ore coming out of the Connector Pit, which gives us the opportunity to restart that leach operation and have some additional pounds coming out of the mine,” McDonald said.

Alongside this, the company is thinking about leaching other ore types at Gibraltar.

“There are new technologies coming to the market in terms of providing mines with the opportunity to leach sulphides as well as oxides,” McDonald said. “We’re in the early stages of that work, but we have lots of waste rock at the property and, if there is a potential revenue stream for it, we will look at leveraging that.”

First Quantum and AES sign renewable energy deal for Cobre Panama

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First Quantum Minerals’ majority-owned Cobre Panama operation has signed a long-term contract with AES Panama for the supply of renewable energy, starting in January 2024.

The agreement establishes that the energy supplied by the electricity generation company to the copper mine will be certified renewable energy from solar, wind and hydroelectric sources.

The CEO of First Quantum Minerals, Tristan Pascall (right), and the President of AES Panama, Miguel Bolinaga, gathered to sign the contract (pictured).

“As a responsible mining company, we recognise our obligation to contribute to the management and mitigation of climate change and part of our contribution is through a transition to clean energy sources in our operations, including Cobre Panamá,” Pascall said.

“The global need to accelerate the transition to the use of cleaner energy will require an increase in the production of minerals and metals, such as copper, used in solar panels, wind farms and electric vehicles. This agreement for the energy transition of our operations is also a logical step to increase the sustainability of our production.”

Miguel Bolinaga, President of AES Panama (left), said: “One of the main goals of AES at a global and local level is to lead the energy transition, which is why for us offering cleaner energy solutions to our clients is a priority.”

The Operations Superintendent of the Panama Copper Power Plant, Boris Batista, said the agreement with AES would cover the plant’s need for more power, and that all this additional power – 64 kW – would come from renewable energy sources.

Other steps would follow in the process of reducing carbon emissions at Cobre Panama. By 2025, 30% of the energy used in Cobre Panama’s operations is expected to come from renewable sources. For its part, the First Quantum Minerals group plans to reduce its carbon emissions in its global operations by 50% by 2030.

OZ Minerals Carrapateena debottlenecking accelerates with HIGmill addition

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OZ Minerals’ Carrapateena operation in South Australia is gaining momentum with its processing plant running in excess of nameplate through a cost-effective and efficient debottlenecking strategy.

The latest sign of this strategy taking shape comes in the form of the installation of a second HIGmill from Metso Outotec.

This high-intensity grinding mill has been installed in parallel to the existing mill at the copper-gold operation to increase regrind capacity for all ore types to maintain optimal concentrate grades, the company says.

“We selected HIGmills due to the simplicity of installation and the total cost of ownership,” the company told IM. “As both HIGmills are identical, this allows for commonality of spares and predictable operation.”

The initial processing plant at Carrapateena was designed to produce at a nameplate of 4.25 Mt/y, yet, through debottlenecking and continued process improvement, the plant has recently run at annualised run rate in excess of 5 Mt/y, the company said. This is also an increase on the 4.6 Mt/y processed in 2021.

Like other ‘connected’ equipment within the Carrapateena processing plant, the new HIGmill has been fully integrated into a SCADA system monitored by the control room. It can also be monitored remotely at OZ Minerals’ Adelaide remote operations centre, the company added.

Beyond debottlenecking, OZ Minerals is planning a major expansion at Carrapateena through the development of a block cave operation, which was signed off by the OZ Minerals Board in early 2021.

The expansion, which will involve converting the lower part of the current sub-level cave into a series of block caves, is expected to prolong operations at the copper-gold mine, while boosting production to 12 Mt/y. This will see average copper production come in at 110,000-120,000 t/y and gold output average 110,000-120,000 oz/y from 2026, compared with production of 55,262 t and 89,778 oz, respectively, in 2021.

Under the expansion project, the company is targeting block cave 1 to begin operations by 2026 and block cave 2 by 2038.

While the block cave is being established, a second process plant will be built in parallel to the existing one. Below surface, construction of the second crusher is expected to be completed towards the end of next year, and processing plant optimisation is ongoing. These will help produce a concentrate to be transported to port and subsequently to smelters by ships, the company told IM.

Draslovka about to move into glycine leaching mining demonstration phase

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Czech Republic-based Draslovka Holding is heading into a busy 12-month period where its glycine leaching technology will be showcased at numerous mining projects across the globe, the company told IM on the side lines of the Resourcing Tomorrow conference, in London, this week.

According to Ivor Bryan, Director of Mining Innovation at Draslovka Mining Solutions and the former MD of Mining & Process Solutions (MPS), the entity responsible for the development of the GlyCat™ and GlyLeach™ technologies, the company is embarking on around 10 projects in the mining space, which will prove up the 3,500 hours of testing that has been conducted at MPS’ facilities in Perth, Western Australia.

MPS was acquired by Draslovka, a major sodium cyanide producer in 2022, with the aim of the transaction being to grow and develop the glycine leaching business.

Gold leach testing via GlyCat has been the major area of focus over the last decade. The process was invented to reduce cyanide consumption while maintaining gold recovery for gold ores from deposits containing nuisance copper. It has been designed to enhance the dissolution of gold and copper in gold/copper ores where glycine is used as a catalyst with cyanide in a cyanide-starved leaching environment. It doesn’t replace cyanide, but, in fact, enhances its leaching capabilities by dealing with the high-cyanide consuming copper within these gold-copper orebodies.

Yet, the company is also now starting to make inroads into the base metal space through GlyLeach, with nickel and cobalt two specific areas of interest. The technology is able to leach the targeted metals with enhanced selectivity compared with conventional methods. It will solubilise copper, nickel, cobalt and zinc, while gangue minerals such as iron, manganese, silicates and carbonates remain in the leach residue, Draslovka says.

This is allowing the company to promote that it can reduce the capital expenditure associated with processing these metals by removing the need for smelting, or in the case of tailings deposits, helping recover metal from assets previously written off as ‘waste’.

While the technology could have applications at run of mine operations, Bryan and his colleague Jackson Briggs, Corporate Development Manager of Draslovka, believe the most immediate opportunity is in tailings where the application of glycine leaching on ‘waste’ material could recover valuable metals while reducing the potential liabilities associated with such storage facilities.

Of the 10 or so projects the company has ahead of it, one is situated in Western Australia where the company is looking to recover nickel and cobalt metals from a tailings deposit of a major mining company.

Another project – much closer to fruition – is in Chile and involves leaching a carbonate-hosted copper oxide deposit containing some 600 t of material.

In both cases, the company is looking to demonstrate that it can recover valuable metals at high recovery rates, with low impact – namely rationalising reagent and water use and, in the case of nickel-cobalt, removing smelting from the equation.

This, according to Draslovka CEO, Pavel Bruzek, is a “win-win” for mining companies and their stakeholders, benefitting both the balance sheet and the operational environmental footprint.

“While we are a major sodium cyanide producer, when we saw the potential of MPS’ glycine leaching technology and the increase in metallurgical complexity of orebodies looking to be exploited, it made perfect sense to work with and promote this technology,” he told IM. “It is the responsible thing to do for the industry.”

Anglo American and Aurubis to develop sustainable ‘future-enabling’ copper metals plan

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Anglo American says it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Aurubis AG, a provider of non-ferrous metals and one of the world’s largest copper recyclers, to develop a copper product offering that responds to increasing expectations for future-enabling metals that are sustainably sourced and supplied.

The objective of the collaboration is to provide assurance around the way copper is mined, processed, transported and brought to market, according to Anglo American.

Applying their combined expertise, Anglo American and Aurubis will also explore the opportunity for technology-driven traceability solutions to bring greater transparency to the entire production cycle, as well as areas of common interest in technology development, the partners said.

Peter Whitcutt, CEO of Anglo American’s Marketing business, said: “Copper plays such a pivotal role in addressing the challenges of climate change and raising living standards for the world’s growing population. Rightly, it needs to be produced sustainably and as part of a customer- centric supply chain.

“Together with Aurubis, and in line with our Sustainable Mining Plan goal to establish ethical value chains, we are engaging with industry participants to optimise the value that responsible supply can provide. The value chain starts from our portfolio of high-quality and long-life resource assets, now including our new world-class Quellaveco mine in Peru, and we are now working to establish a more comprehensive and integrated approach along the entirety of what is a fragmented mine-to-customer journey.”

Roland Harings, CEO of Aurubis, said: “This collaboration with Anglo American is yet another example of how we intend to develop and enhance the transparency of the entire supply chain. Anglo American’s Sustainable Mining Plan aligns with the pillars of the Aurubis sustainability label “Tomorrow Metals”, launched in 2021 which promises to our business partners to stay best in class in all sustainability challenges of today and the future by using our metals.”

Anglo American and Aurubis have also committed to be assessed against the Copper Mark Chain of Custody Standard.

Anglo American’s managed copper operations in Chile – the Los Bronces and El Soldado mining operations and the Chagres smelter – were awarded the Copper Mark, the assurance standard for responsible production practices, in March 2022.

Sandvik to deliver load and haul equipment to JCHX Mining in DRC

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Sandvik has received a large mining equipment order from the China-based global mining services provider JCHX Mining Management Co., Ltd to be used in the Kamoa-Kakula copper mine and the Kamoya copper and cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The order is valued at SEK 210 million ($20.1 million) and will be booked in the December quarter of 2022.

The order is for a fleet of load and haul equipment, including eight Sandvik TH545i trucks, five Sandvik TH663i trucks, three Sandvik LH621i loaders, two Sandvik LH514E cable-electric loaders and one Sandvik LH514 loader.

The equipment will primarily be delivered during 2023, but with the first delivery expected by the end of the year.

Mats Eriksson, President of Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions, said: “I am pleased to see the continued demand for our highly productive offering of intelligent mining equipment. Our highest-capacity intelligent load and haul equipment has been in operation at Kamoa since 2019, and this order is a testament to the strength and quality of the solutions we provide.”

Anglo American to fill almost half of Los Bronces mine water requirements with desalinated resource

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Anglo American, following the signing of an agreement with Aguas Pacífico, a Chile-based water desalination and solutions provider, says it has secured desalinated water supply for its Los Bronces copper mine in Chile from 2025.

This pact will meet almost half of the mine’s water requirements, Anglo American says.

In this first phase, Anglo American will be supplied with desalinated water from a plant that is being built in the Valparaiso region by Aguas Pacífico. The water will be transported via pipeline
to the Las Tortolas plant from where it will be pumped up to the Los Bronces mine. Anglo American will also provide desalinated water to supply the nearby communities of Colina and Til
Til, benefiting approximately 20,000 people.

Ruben Fernandes, CEO of Anglo American’s Base Metals business, said: “Anglo American has set an ambition of reducing fresh water abstraction in water scarce regions by 50% by 2030. This agreement – which is the first phase of a larger and longer term integrated water project to eliminate our use of fresh water at our Los Bronces operation – is an important step towards
achieving that goal.

“The Central zone of Chile, where Los Bronces is located, has been impacted by a decade-long severe drought and this desalinated water will supply more than 45% of Los Bronces’ needs while also providing clean water to approximately 20,000 people in communities local to the operation.”

Anik Michaud, Group Director of Corporate Relations and Sustainable Impact at Anglo American, said: “Beyond this first phase, we are also planning an innovative swap scheme to provide desalinated water for human consumption in exchange for treated wastewater that will supply our operation. This would allow us to stop drawing any fresh water for Los Bronces – our ultimate goal.

“This innovative approach not only secures industrial water supply for our Los Bronces operation to sustain copper production, but also benefits local communities with the provision of clean water.”