PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The board of copper miner Aeris Resources has given its approval for the development of the Murrawombie underground mine, in New South Wales, near the existing Tritton operations.
Aeris is expected to spend about A$6.4-million on the Stage 1 infrastructure at Murrawombie over the next 18 months, while a further A$8.5-million will be spent on capital development.
Aeris executive chairperson Andre Labuschagne said on Monday that production from the Murrawombie mine would replace current production from the Larsens and North East mines, which were scheduled to conclude in July this year, with a higher volume and longer life deposit to sustain and, over time, increase the supply of ore to its copper processing plant.
“Combined with existing ore being mined at Tritton, Murrowombie will allow us to increase throughput of our processing plant to a rate of about 1.8-million tonnes a year in 2017, and beyond, which will deliver significant production efficiencies at Tritton.”
First ore from Murrawombie was expected at the Tritton processing plant by the fourth quarter of this year.
Murrawombie currently has an ore reserve of some 3.3-million tonnes, at an average grade of 1.3% copper. The deposit is the largest known concentration of copper metal on Aeris’s tenements outside of the Tritton deposit, and was mined in the 1990s as an openpit operation. However, the sulphide portion of the deposit was not mined at the time owing to its unsuitability for heap leaching.
The underground mine was originally developed in 2007, but was put into care and maintenance during the global financial crisis in 2008.
Edited by: Creamer Media Reporter
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