Tag Archives: lead

De.mem to clean up at South32’s Cannington silver-lead mine

Base metals, Environmental, Mine operation news, Mineral processing, Mining equipment, Precious metals, Water management, , , , , , , ,

Water and waste water treatment company De.mem has unveiled A$350,000 ($252,364) in new orders from municipal and resource sector customers, including one from South32’s Cannington silver-lead operation in Queensland, Australia.

The sale to South32 is for a membrane-based water treatment system supplied by the company’s wholly-owned Akwa-Worx subsidiary.

Akwa-Worx designs, builds and delivers a wide range of water and waste water treatment systems that make use of modern membrane technologies. Depending on the contaminants to be removed, and the product water quality desired, these systems may use ultrafiltration, nanofiltration or reverse osmosis membranes, plus there is also a membrane bioreactor option.

Cannington has been in production for 20 years and now produces 7% of the world’s lead and 6% of the world’s silver, according to the company.

Sandvik to show off OptiMine capabilities at Hindustan Zinc’s SK zinc-lead-silver mine

Automation, Base metals, Communications in mining, Equipment maintenance, IoT, Mine operation news, Mining equipment, Mining maintenance, Mining safety, Mining services, Mining software, Precious metals, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sandvik is set to deliver one of the most comprehensive digital offerings globally at Hindustan Zinc’s Sindesar Khurd (SK) zinc-lead-silver mine in Rajasthan, India.

The company will use its OEM-independent OptiMine® digital solutions to ensure all required infrastructure and platforms are established to achieve world-class mining safety, efficiency and productivity, it said.

The system includes a comprehensive set of features for short interval control of the underground operations, including: OptiMine Monitoring, Location Tracking and Mine Visualization, Scheduler, Task Management and OptiMine Analytics, the latter with IBM Watson IoT. The system will be commissioned in 2019.

For this programme, Sandvik is partnering with Newtrax Technologies, which will deliver personnel tracking with cap lamps, tracking and telemetry data for the entire mobile underground fleet, including non-Sandvik equipment, numbering more than 150 drills, loaders, trucks and other equipment. The Newtrax offering will be seamlessly integrated with the Sandvik OptiMine digital platform creating an integrated mine management solution at the SK mine.

Patrick Murphy, President Product Area Rock Drills and Technologies at Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology, said: “Sandvik OptiMine modules can be combined as needed to build up the required functionality and to optimise mining operations. With open interfaces, the solution can also be integrated to other mine IT systems. This interoperability is crucial in enabling our customers to leverage the full value of digitalisation.

“Vedanta Hindustan Zinc has a vision of what the mine of the future will look like, and we’re excited to collaborate with them to make it happen at SK mine. The capability of this system will be virtually unmatched globally in underground hard-rock mining in terms of both scope and scale.”

Sunil Duggal, CEO at Hindustan Zinc, said: “We at Hindustan Zinc are leveraging digital solutions to improve our availability, utilisation and productivity at the SK Mine. With OptiMine, we will be able to plan, schedule and monitor overall operations in real time. This will add major value and increase our productivity, eliminating bottlenecks and allowing us to measure and monitor our key performance indicators in real time, proactively addressing problems before they occur.”

Hindustan Zinc is one of the world’s largest integrated producers of zinc and among leading global lead and silver producers. Its core business comprises of mining and smelting of zinc and lead along with captive power generation. It has a metal production capacity of more than 1 Mt/y with lead-zinc mines in Rampura Agucha and Sindesar Khurd; and key modern smelting complexes in Chanderiya and Dariba, all in Rajasthan, India.

SK Mine is a highly mechanised underground mine with an ore production capacity of 5.5 Mt/y. The mine’s products are zinc and lead concentrate and the mining method used is blasthole open stoping.

OptiMine is a digital platform for analysing and optimising mining production and processes. It integrates all relevant data into one source, delivering both real-time and predictive insights to improve operations. OptiMine is open, scalable, and adaptable to automated and manual applications.

OptiMine Analytics, with IBM Watson IoT, is the next generation of OptiMine that transforms data into process improvement via predictive insights and actionable dashboards embedded into operation management systems. The solution is part of the digital partnership between Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology and IBM and is backed by Sandvik and IBM digital experts around the globe.

NQ Minerals wraps up Hellyer offtake with latest Traxys deal

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NQ Minerals, a week after confirming the first sale of concentrate from its Hellyer tailings project, has entered into an additional marketing and offtake agreement with Traxys Europe that covers all the precious metal and pyrite concentrate to be produced over the first five years of operation.

The agreement includes the facility for prepayment against concentrate deliveries and provides Hellyer with access to Traxys’s extensive global network and experienced marketing and distribution team, NQ said.

NQ Minerals’ 2017 acquisition of Hellyer, in Tasmania, Australia, allows the opportunity to fully process the mine’s tailings.

Held within four separate areas, the tailings total a JORC-compliant resource of 9.5 Mt host to 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.

The company has successfully ramped up the mill since acquisition, with flotation commissioning commencing at Hellyer in September after successful tails dredging and pumping slurry from the main tailings dam to the mill.

NQ Minerals and Traxys previously entered into two marketing and offtake agreements, combined with a $10 million secured prepayment facility agreement, with Traxys for the sale of lead and zinc concentrates over the first five years of operations.

GR Engineering gets the Abra lead-silver DFS gig

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Galena Mining has retained Australia-based GR Engineering Services to carry out the bulk of the definitive feasibility study (DFS) on its Abra lead-silver project in Western Australia.

The engineering company will undertake key portions of the DFS related to plant design, capital and operating cost estimation, and process and non-process infrastructure evaluation.

The commencement of the study comes following an “excellent” prefeasibility study for Abra, according to Galena. This envisaged a 1.2 Mt/y underground mine and conventional flotation concentrator for the project, producing a high-grade lead-silver concentrate containing some 91,000 t/y of lead and 760,000 oz/y of silver over a 14-year mine life.

GR Engineering Managing Director, Geoff Jones said: “GR Engineering was involved in the Abra PFS and we are pleased to have been engaged to deliver key aspects of the DFS and to assist Galena to realise the significant potential of the Abra base metals project.”

The DFS is targeted for completion in mid-2019. In the meantime, Galena expects to make progress on a number of other milestones including an updated resource, a review of the Abra ore reserve and underground mine design/schedule, permitting, and continuation of discussions related to offtake and project finance.

Galena is targeting commencement of construction at Abra in 2019, followed by initial production in 2021 and the first full year of steady-state commercial output in 2022.

During the past 11 years, GR Engineering has completed more than 40 design and construction projects and over 160 feasibility studies including a number of Australia base metals projects, Galena said.

CSA Global scopes out Myanmar Metals’ Bawdwin polymetallic project

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Myanmar Metals’ Baldwin polymetallic project looks like having at least 13 years of operating life in it, according to a scoping study carried out by CSA Global.

The study, which featured the China Pit as a starter operation, outlined a 1.8 Mt/y operation producing some 1.6 Mt of lead-silver-copper concentrate and 994,000 t of zinc concentrate over the life of mine could be built for $191 million in upfront capital.

Bawdwin, on the eastern side of Myanmar, has been mined by both open pit and underground means in the past, with over 100 years of documented operations providing Myanmar Metals and CSA Global with a good understanding of the geometry and continuity of the mineralised lodes, Myanmar Metals said. The ASX-listed company has a 51% participating interest in the project held through a contractual joint venture.

John Lamb, Executive Chairman and CEO of Myanmar Metals, said: “The China pit is the opening move in bringing the Bawdwin polymetallic province back into production.”

He added that this pit is likely to be the first of least three (Shan and Meingtha being the others) on the Bawdwin concession, followed by a “long-life underground mining operation”.

Myanmar Metals has proven up a 81.8 Mt indicated and inferred resource grading 4.8% Pb, 2.4% Zn, 0.24% Cu and 119 ppm Ag at the China Pit, but only 21 Mt of mineable material has been factored into this scoping study.

The company has already started its prefeasibility study on the project, with completion set for the March quarter. Myanmar Metals anticipates carrying out a further feasibility study in late 2019.

It has already signed up the likes of Battery Limits, Coffey International, CSA Global, Titeline Drilling and Valentis Services for these studies.

Ironbark Zinc signs up Byrnecut for Citronen underground contract mining

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Greenland-focused Ironbark Zinc has signed a memorandum of understanding with Byrnecut Offshore Pty that could see the contractor carry out mining, model underground mine costs and provide the fleet for the Citronen zinc-lead project.

The contract has been signed as Ironbark carries out work on removing key items from the project’s capital cost estimates. A definitive feasibility study last year pegged this at $514 million.

Ironbark said the Byrnecut agreement provides it with “extensive international experience in underground hard-rock mechanised mining”.

It said the companies would work towards a more detailed cost based commercial agreement operating under agreed margins through each project stage, and will also encompass agreed performance margins. As part of the agreement, Byrnecut is also expected to hold the debt and security of the equipment for the underground mining fleet.

Ironbark is in discussions with other groups for the remaining disciplines, or to support the project, that have the potential to collectively and significantly assist with the overall project financing.

The $514 million project envisages a production rate of 3.3 million tonnes per year with up to 200,000 t/y of zinc metal produced over a mine life of 14 years.

Located in northern Greenland, Byrnecut’s first-hand knowledge of the skills necessary to overcome remote location logistics, language barriers and upskilling the national workforce will prove key to development and operating success.

Ironbark Managing Director Jonathan Downes said: “Byrnecut has the capacity to provide Ironbark with an immediate ‘bolt-on’ underground mining expertise that will assist Ironbark as we move from financing to active mining.”