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First quarter results show activity at Century Zinc Mine ramping up towards full production.
New Century, the owners of the mine near Burketown, say they have recorded a 50% increase in zinc production for the quarter.
In their quarterly update to the ASX, New Century said plant capacity was scheduled to more than double in 2019 through further flotation cell refurbishments with mining ramp up to five cannons.
New Century said it was targeting progression toward nameplate plant recoveries throughout quarter two and there was a 55% increase in customer receipts for concentrate shipments during Q1.
That amounted to $48.6 million in receipts for the quarter and a total of 61,000t zinc concentrate shipments to date to China, Europe and Australia.
The project's secret weapon is hydraulic mining and New Century implement a third mining post quarter end on its way to an ultimate target of five cannons.
New Century is targeting full mining rate ramp up to 15 million tonnes a year by end of 2019
"Plant ramp up continued throughout Q1 2019, with a progressive increase in all aspects of production, including metal recovery, concentrate tonnage and overall product quality and a 50.4% increase in quarterly zinc production," the company told the ASX.
"Plant capacity scheduled to more than double in 2019 through further flotation cell refurbishment activities during 2019."
New Century said the increase in overall production was due to improved plant performance, with hydraulic mining operations delivering 8% less metal to the plant on a quarterly basis due to wet season effects and mining of marginally lower grade zones of the tailings dam.
Despite the decrease in total metal mined, the operations still achieved an increase in metal production of over 50%, which New Century said showed improvement in plant metallurgical performance.
The company their quarter 2 focus was the ramp up of recovery performance and increasing throughput rate with the progressive commissioning of the third mining cannon.
They will also finalise the expansion pre-feasibility study to investigate mining their in-situ mineral resources
New Century said the study has the potential to increase the tailings only six-year mine life.
"Different blending strategies and plant configurations, are being investigated to determine the optimum pathway for zinc and lead production from the expanded operations," they said.
"Should New Century elect to expand operations via the insitu Mineral Resources, the Company will refurbish the existing carbon and lead flotation circuits within the plant, enabling production of separate zinc and lead concentrates as per historical operations."
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