New Century Resources has announced the ‘successful’ commencement of tailings slurry flotation activities at their Century Mine Project, which is located at Lawn Hill, 250km north-west of Mount Isa in the Lower Gulf of Carpentaria.
New Century now aims to ramp up activities at the mine, focusing on progressively optimising concentrate product quality through the zinc cleaner circuit, followed by zinc and silver recoveries and plant throughput.
The company has also stated that the hydraulic mining operations have also made ‘excellent initial progress’, with activities to date demonstrating the Century Tailings Deposit is amenable to rapid ramp up to target slurry density.
Century has an estimated production capacity of 264,000tpa zinc and 3 million ounces pa silver over a forecast mine life of 6.3 years. However, there is a potential for mine life extension depending on the outcome of the company’s exploration programs across the 1,800km2 tenement.
Prior to a restart of operations, Century was one of the largest zinc mines in the world, producing and processing an average of 475,00 tonnes per annum (TPA) zinc concentrate and 50,000tpa lead concentrates at Lawn Hill. The product was then transferred in a slurry form through a 304km underground pipeline to Century’s Port facility at Karumba for shipping to smelters in Australia, Europe and Asia.
New Century will continue to provide further developments associated with the ramp-up process at the mine.
More information on this can be found here.