North West copper miner CuDeco has said June was a record production month at its Rocklands Copper Mine at Cloncurry.
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The company said they produced 1828 tonnes of copper metal in 6,732 DMT (Dry Metric Tonnes) of concentrate averaging 27.09% Cu (mill estimates) at the plant around 17km north-west of town.
It follows what was a good start to the month and CuDeco said that beat the previous best month in April with production of 1712 tonnes of copper metal.
These results were achieved despite HPGR (high pressure grinding roller) throughput 16% below forecast at 215,783 WMT (Wet Metric Tonnes) for the month due to unscheduled stoppages, and were helped by metal recoveries of 92%.
June concentrate includes estimated by-product of 654 ounces of gold.
CuDeco’s interim chairman Peter Hutchison said June was where they needed to be metallurgically, with high recoveries and high-grade concentrates.
“We still need to work through a few reliability issues with respect to feed through the HPGR, however I am confident our people will have this resolved in the near future,” Mr Hutchinson said.
“I look forward to seeing a trouble free period of nameplate production and performance at the upper range of what we all know Rocklands is capable of.”
The company said around 8211 WMT tonnes of concentrate were loaded to ship for sea-export to China and metal recovery in June was 92% which is a significant improvement on May’s 67%.
CEO Mark Gregory said June was a very good month for CuDeco.
“July to date is continuing on from June’s positive trends,” Mr Gregory said.
“While we are pleased to be finally seeing strong data from our operations, there is still considerable upside to our performance which will continue to be facilitated through a structured program of operational excellence initiatives, particularly preventative maintenance, optimisation of processes and focus on cost efficiencies.”