Tag Archives: lead

First Ore-Mining looks to VIST’s AI solution for Pavlovskoye lead-zinc development

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First Ore-Mining Company and ZYFRA have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) that could see the Pavlovskoye lead-zinc deposit deploy artificial intelligence-based solutions for mining and processing operations.

Pavlovskoye is set to become the most northerly mine in Russia, once First-Ore, a Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corp division, moves ahead with development. It is scheduled to have a 3.5 Mt/y ore processing capacity.

The MoU document was signed at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum by Igor Semenov, Executive Director of First Ore-Mining Company, and Igor Bogachev, CEO of ZYFRA.

Bogachev said: “It is more difficult for companies to operate in extreme climatic conditions because of factors such as the high cost of resources and special work safety regulations. The robotised systems offered by our subsidiary, VIST Group, including Intelligent Mine, will reduce equipment downtime by 10-20% and maintenance costs by 15-18%, thereby cutting production costs by 2-3%.”

Intelligent Mine is a set of digital technologies for managing open-pit mining processes based on robotised lоad and haul systems, together with industry solutions in the fields of artificial intelligence and predictive analytics. “One of the advantages of the system is that it enables extraction of minerals in inaccessible and remote regions with severe climatic and subsurface conditions,” the digital solutions provider for heavy industries said.

The parties aim to explore a possible project to implement robotics and remote control of quarry equipment at the Pavlovskoye deposit of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. A bilateral working group will be set up within 45 days for this purpose, while the MoU covers a period of three years.

Semenov said: “Rosatom State Corp and First Ore-Mining Company have a strong focus on occupational safety. We are beginning this work in advance, so that the very first ore will be produced using advanced technologies in the safest possible conditions. Cooperation with Zyfra, which has extensive experience in developing digital smart solutions, will help us achieve this.”

Europa mobilises diamond drill rig, service providers for Toral lead-zinc-silver exploration

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Europa Metals reports that a diamond drilling rig has been mobilised to its Toral lead-zinc-silver project in Leόn, northern Spain, as the London-listed company looks to commence a new exploration campaign in the next week.

The rig and associated operating crew is being supplied by Sondeos y Perforaciones Industriales de Bierzo SA and will be overseen by Europa’s on-site exploration team, the company said. The campaign will be conducted using a single drilling rig with assays sent for independent analysis on a rolling basis.

Addison Mining Services Limited (AMS) has been retained to carry out a revised independent resource update in accordance with JORC guidelines once the campaign has been concluded, Europa said, with Wardell Armstrong engaged to conduct the metallurgical test work from a representative sample taken from the drilling.

The core objectives of the drilling campaign are to drill into the high-grade core of the project, as defined within the existing inferred JORC resource (16 Mt at 7% zinc-equivalent); target high-grade areas within the defined resource to further the company’s understanding of the project – the aim being to increase confidence in the resource estimate and attain the indicated resource category – and; obtain a significant sample for the metallurgical test work to determine the potential zinc, lead and silver concentrate composition from Toral.

Laurence Read, Executive Director of Europa Metals, said: “Over the next two quarters, we are expecting to announce the results from the drilling, an updated JORC resource, and details of the likely product types that can be produced from Toral. Taken together, we believe that these key milestones will allow us to advance the processing design and commence discussions with potential offtakers.”

RCT brings automation to MATSA underground operations in Spain

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RCT says it has finalised a major automation project at MATSA’s Aguas Teñidas and Magdalena mines in the Huelva province of Spain.

The project involved installing ControlMaster® Guidance Automation on four CAT R2900G underground LHDs and one Automation Centre Surface Control Station at MATSA’s Aguas Teñidas copper-lead-zinc mine.

MATSA is a jointly-owned company by Mubadala Investment Co and Trafigura. It owns and operates three mines in the Huelva, including Aguas Teñidas, Magdalena and Sotiel, on top of a 4.4 Mt/y copper and polymetallic processing plant.

RCT’s automation centre at Aguas Teñidas is fitted out with RCT’s Multiple Machine Control feature enabling a single operator to remotely control multiple machines at the same time via the mine’s digital communications network.

RCT also commissioned two Sandvik LH621 underground LHDs with ControlMaster Guidance Automation at the nearby Magdalena copper mine. These Sandvik LHDs can operate on a digital network via RCT’s Area Access Cabinets which act as an extension of the automation centre and interfaces between the work areas and the machines.

This instalment builds on a previous project to mount ControlMaster Teleremote and Guidance Automation solutions on three of the site’s CAT R2900G LHDs, which operated on an analogue network via two surface control stations, according to RCT.

Guidance Automation allows machines to tram between two predetermined points on a mine site with the push of a button by operators who also receive real-time information including machine speed, rpm, direction, pitch and roll, RCT said.

“The automation centre consists of an ergonomically designed operators chair facing up from screens, which feed real-time information from sensors and machine-mounted cameras to the operator,” the company added. Teleremote, meanwhile, enables the operator to remotely manage the machine from a control station in real time.

A MATSA spokesperson said: “This system not only allows us to operate in hazardous conditions safely from the surface, but also increases productivity by permitting us to operate during shift change and smoke clearing. We also have the capability to simultaneously operate more than one piece of equipment with the same teleremote operator.”

RCT Account Manager, Shane Smith, said the Guidance Automation products would provide solid benefits for MATSA. “ControlMaster Guidance Automation has a proven track record of improving operator safety in a traditionally hazardous working environment by removing them from the mine face,” he said.

“The faster tramming speeds will also help to boost site productivity on site and limit unplanned machine downtime due to repairs from machinery accidents while the new automation centre will reduce operator fatigue due to improved comfort and ease-of-access on the mine’s surface.”

Volkswagen signs up blockchain specialist Minespider to track lead supply

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Beginning in April, Minespider says it is to partner with Volkswagen in an initial pilot focusing on tracking the carmaker’s lead supply, working with suppliers and sub-suppliers accounting for more than two-thirds of the group’s total lead starter battery requirements.

Volkswagen’s ultimate aim, according to the blockchain specialist, is to ensure all of its raw materials are sourced in a socially and environmentally sound manner.

“In the automotive sector, like in many other industries, supply chain transparency is a major issue, and to ensure sustainable mobility, responsible procurement is essential,” Minespider said. “Minespider and Volkswagen are working together to make procurement both more transparent and secure. Blockchain allows participants to trace the supply chain from the point of origin to the factory.”

Marco Philippi, Head of Strategy for Volkswagen Group Procurement, said sustainability in the supply chain is one of the company’s top priorities. “We see blockchain technology as part of the solution to ensure compliance with environmental and social standards along the entire supply chain,” he said.

Minespider is an open source, public blockchain protocol that offers stakeholders the opportunity to track the origin of their raw materials and present a complete chain of custody from certified mine to end manufacturer, according to the company. It was originally founded to address increasing global conflict mineral legislation, including the Dodd-Frank Act Section 1502 and the EU’s Conflict Minerals Regulation, which require companies to know who is supplying their gold, tin, tantalum, and tungsten.

“With industry interest turning toward increased transparency, the Minespider team are also launching initiatives into other key materials,” the company said. “The public protocol approach is a departure from previous supply chain tracking initiatives that used private, permissioned blockchains. This avoids the risk of a large player with a private blockchain creating a monopoly on the global mineral supply chain. By using a token-driven design, they provide the mechanism for decentralising protocol governance.”

Minespider’s Founder, Nathan Williams (pictured), said: “Ultimately, we would like to see an industry-wide transformation, a public protocol that any responsible supplier can join.”

Minespider’s protocol uses nested encryption to ensure a company’s data remains private on a public blockchain, it says. Digital “certificates” are created at certified mineral sources, such as mines or recyclers, which are then encrypted with the company’s public key and posted in a publicly accessible database.

As mineral shipments are sold, responsibility data of the new owner is added to the certificate which is re-encrypted with the public key of the new owner, creating a layered encryption like a “Russian doll”, Minespider says. “This ensures that only the owner is able to access the supply chain data, even though it is in a verifiable, immutable public data store, enabling supply chain transparency without sacrificing data security.”

MineSense front and centre in bulk ore sorting game

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Having just commercialised its bulk ore sorting technology at Teck Resources’ Highland Valley Copper (HVC) operations in British Columbia, Canada, MineSense is looking to show the wider industry just how effective this pre-concentration process can be.

IM spoke with President and CEO, Jeff More, to find out more about the company’s ShovelSense and BeltSense technologies and how the Vancouver-based startup has been able to secure investment from the likes of ABB, Caterpillar and Mitsubishi.

IM: Can you explain in a little more detail how your ShovelSense and BeltSense solutions work?

JM: The base technology for both is X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) – a technology that has been around for some time. What we have done to this existing technology, which is quite unique, is three things:

  • One, we have extended dramatically the range of XRF. Traditionally XRF would almost have to be held to the surface of a rock to get accurate measurements. The range extension allows us to work in the shovel environment where we are working across metres of volume;
  • Second is speed. Our system is extremely fast. High speed analysis is required on our conveyor belt applications, but this is even more important in the shovel, where we’re measuring dynamically; as the material is flowing into the shovel, to get a representative reading, you have to be able to take very fast readings of the material as it is moving past the sensors;
  • The third is robustness. On a shovel, you are in a nasty environment from a shock and vibration perspective. We developed a system with sensitive components – the XRF itself, as well as the computing devices around it – that can stand up to that very high shock- and vibration-type environment.

IM: The most high-profile examples of the application of your ShovelSense technology have been at copper mines (HVC, in particular); is the detection technology particularly effective in these ores? Is it being trialled elsewhere?

JM: The current sensing we have with the XRF is very effective in a certain section of the periodic table, which nicely covers the major base metals. We’re focused on copper, nickel, zinc and polymetallic versions of those three. The fourth area of focus is iron ore.

We’ve selected copper as our first focus because of the size of the market and the geography. We have done most of our work in copper, but we now also have operating systems in nickel and zinc.

On a lab scale, the technology has been very effective in iron ore, but iron ore is a very different flow sheet, so we have purposely set it as our fourth market in what we call our primary clusters.

We have five mine site customers at the moment – three copper, one zinc-lead and one nickel-polymetallic.

We were very much focused on North America and, in particular, British Columbia for our first pilots and trials as it was quite easy for us to service in our back yard. The first international market was Chile, for obvious reasons in terms of copper production, and we now have a full MineSense entity and team operating in Chile and Peru.

We’re staggering the rest of our global expansion. We’re now quite active from a business development perspective in southern Africa – South Africa, Zambia, DRC – and have activity in Australia.

We have Systems installed at two different copper mines in British Columbia, one at a very large nickel-polymetallic complex in Sudbury, Ontario, and will have a fourth system operating in Alaska. We also have two mines, but four systems, operating in Chile. By the end of Q2, we will have another three systems operating in Chile.

We did all our development work for the system at Teck’s HVC operation and we’re now completely commercial there. We officially commissioned our first system in December, the second system is being commissioned as we speak and the third and fourth will be installed and commissioned in late-March. This will completely equip their fleet.

IM: Teck has previously said the use of ShovelSense has resulted in “a net measurable increase in the amount of ore (and the associated head grade)” it has available to feed its mill at HVC. Are these results in keeping with your expectations for the technology?

JM: Yes, absolutely. We base everything on, what we call, our value model. Very early in our engagement process, we set out a detailed model that calculates the profit improvement that mine will see – we did the same for Teck HVC.

We agreed on a target at HVC and are actually exceeding that estimate. Most importantly, Teck is also seeing that value and is estimating a great overall impact at that mine.

This is an abridged version of a Q&A to be published in the ore sorting feature in the March issue of International Mining.

Barminco wins extension at Hindustan Zinc-owned Rampura Agucha zinc-lead mine

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Ausdrill’s recently added subsidiary, Barminco, has been awarded an underground mining services contract at the Rampura Agucha zinc-lead mine in India from Hindustan Zinc worth approximately A$100 million ($71 million), the ASX-listed company says.

Hard-rock underground miner Barminco has operated at Rampura Agucha for Hindustan, a subsidiary of Vedanta Limited, since late 2016. The new underground mining services contract is for a three-and-a-half-year term, subject to review and mutual agreement of rates after the first year.

The scope of work includes the extension of development works that were being provided under a recently completed contract, plus the addition of production work in the Barminco-developed area of the mine. Under the contract, Hindustan will provide capital equipment and consumables. Barminco will commence work immediately, Ausdrill said.

Barminco CEO, Paul Muller, said: “We are very pleased to have been awarded a contract that extends our operations at the Rampura Agucha mine with an expanded scope to include production works. We look forward to deepening the relationship we have built with Hindustan Zinc over the past few years by delivering on this extended scope of works both safely and efficiently.”

Rampura Agucha is the second largest zinc mine in the world, according to Hindustan, with production of 3.9 Mt in the company’s 2018 financial year. It has a zinc-lead reserve grade averaging 15.7% Zn+Pb, with total reserves of 46 Mt as of March 31, 2018.

The ongoing underground mine project is being developed with a vision of producing 5 Mt/y of ore and includes a main production shaft of 955 m depth, 7.5 m diameter and hauling capacity of 3.75 Mt/y; two ventilation shafts, two declines from surface and paste fill plants, according to Hindustan.

NQ Minerals in for ‘transformational year’ after completing Hellyer commissioning

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London-listed NQ Minerals has completed commissioning of the Hellyer processing plant, in Tasmania, Australia, with production during the December quarter reaching 3,991 t of lead, 1,537 t of zinc, and 4,291 t of pyrite.

This output realised approximately £3.2 million ($4.1 million) in sales, according to NQ Minerals.

“The company is now consistently producing all three concentrates with sales occurring on a weekly basis,” NQ Minerals said.

Held within four separate areas, the Hellyer tailings total a JORC-compliant resource of 9.5 Mt, hosting gold at 2.61 g/t Au for 796,000 oz, silver at 104 g/t Ag for 32 Moz Ag, lead at 3.03% Pb for 287,800 t and zinc at 2.5% Zn for 237,900 t. In addition to these tailings, the Hellyer mine assets include a large pre-existing mill facility and full supporting infrastructure, including a direct rail line to port.

NQ Minerals previously agreed two separate offtake agreements with Traxys for Hellyer’s products, where the trading company will receive all of the precious metals and lead and zinc produced over the first five years.

Brian Stockbridge, Chairman of NQ Minerals, said: “With commissioning substantially complete, NQ is now a producer. Having completed the acquisition and refurbishment of Hellyer over the prior two years, the culmination of management’s efforts will make 2019 a transformational year for the company. With the change in status to a producer, we believe there is substantial potential to unlock shareholder value.”

Heron Resources kicks off commissioning at Woodlawn zinc-copper mine

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Heron Resources has started commissioning at the Woodlawn zinc-copper-lead project in New South Wales, Australia, paving the way for first production in the March quarter.

The ASX-listed company said the owners and contractor commissioning teams for the combined underground mine and tailing retreatment project were now in place, while the hydraulic tailings retreatment preparations had started with infrastructure energised and water testing underway.

In addition, the process plant commissioning had started with testing of the plant control circuits. Heron noted commissioning of the water treatment plant was well advanced.

Heron said: “The hydraulic mining operation, alongside the underground operations that commenced in September 2018, will provide a second ore source to be processed through the new processing plant.”

The hydraulic mining operation covers the recently arrived hydraulic monitors and the associated high-pressure water, reclaim and slurry transfer pumps, with commissioning activities involving the functional testing of equipment in the circuit (including the commissioning of the trash screen and transfer pumps at the transfer station).

Commissioning is expected to ramp up over a four-to-eight-week period and will include the hydraulic excavation of the main channels in preparation for ore commissioning of the process plant with progression to full production rates, Heron said.

“The EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) contractor has commenced its commissioning activities in the main process plant, with low voltage and control circuit testing underway,” Heron said.

“These activities (dry, wet and ore commissioning) will continue through stages into quarter one, 2019, when first production is expected. As at the end of November, the EPC contractor reported commissioning at 5% complete.”

“In conjunction with the commissioning preparation-related activities that have been occurring over the past few months, the Woodlawn site team have also been progressing production readiness preparation.”

This has led to the first fill consumables orders being placed, in addition to the operation being bulked out with enough personnel for initial commissioning.

Woodlawn is envisaged as a 1.5 Mt/y operation able to produce 40,000 t/y of zinc, 10,000 t/y of copper and 12,000 t/y of lead at steady-state production over a 9.3-year mine life. This is based on a reserve base of 2.8 Mt at 14% ZnEq from underground and 9.5 Mt at 6% ZnEq from reprocessed tailings.

Underground mining, being carried out by contractor Pybar, kicked off in October.

South32 powers up Cannington solar PV farm

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The new 7,200-panel solar farm at South32’s Cannington silver-lead mine in northwest Queensland, Australia, is up and running, the mining company confirmed.

The 6 ha, 3 MW installation is the company’s first solar installation and will help to deliver reduced greenhouse gas emissions by offsetting gas consumption with solar. Construction commenced in May.

“Electricity generated from the farm will be used to supply the operation’s accommodation village and airport with surplus power used to support mining and processing operations,” South32 said.

The project – which contributes to the objectives of the company’s Climate Change Strategy – is the second largest solar installation in a remote, off-grid mining operation in Australia and the first to be integrated into a gas-fired power station, according to the company.

Earlier this year, EDL Energy signed a 14-year extension of its contract to supply electricity for Cannington, which included partnering with SunSHIFT, a wholly-owned subsidiary of engineering and construction firm Laing O’Rourke, to ‘hybridise’ the existing 34 MW gas plant at the site, with this 3 MW solar photovoltaic installation.

It is anticipated the new solar farm will prevent between 4,000-6,000 t/y of greenhouse gas emissions.

Rob Jackson, Vice President Operations at Cannington, said the operation was committed to identifying energy efficiency initiatives. “Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a big part of that so I’m delighted that our Cannington operation’s solar installation is leading the way,” he said.

The cost to install and operate the solar farm will be offset by lower fuel costs, according to South32. This makes it an economically viable solution for the operation.

Pybar to move into underground development and production at Aurelia’s Peak Mines ops

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Pybar has recently signed a contract with Aurelia Metals to carry out all underground development and production mining activities at Peak Mines near Cobar, New South Wales, Australia.

The mining contractor has been at the operation since October 2017, providing underground development services and then labour hire to support the existing workforce, it said. This followed Aurelia Metals acquiring the operation from Toronto-listed New Gold.

Pybar CEO Brendan Rouse said: “We have a long-standing partnership with mine owner Aurelia having been contracted at its Hera (gold-lead-zinc) project since it started in 2013. We look forward to further strengthening that relationship, and our ties with the local Cobar community, as we expand our presence at Peak.”

The company said it is currently working closely with Aurelia to ensure ongoing employment for the Aurelia workforce at Peak Mines, should personnel choose to transfer. Some 40 additional new positions are also available at the site which Pybar is seeking to fill to achieve the increased production schedule.

The Pybar team at Peak Mines will be ramping up over the next few months with an initial tenure of five years and the potential to extend.

Peak Mines consists of a series of polymetallic high-grade orebodies dominated by gold, copper and zinc. There is a 750,000 t/y processing plant there, which takes ore from two underground mines.