New Century has gained environmental approval to develop two new blocks while expanding the life of the existing mine.
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The company, which owns one of the world's top ten zinc mines near Lawn Hill north-west of Mount Isa,hope to develop the Silver King and East Fault Blocks on their tenements.
The Silver King deposit is a high-grade deposit south-west of the original open pit and is currently open at depth, with plans for extensional exploration drilling to be completed from underground
The East Fault Block deposit is a pod of the original Century ore deposit and is located north-west of Silver King.
Meanwhile New Century's optimisation study has shown potential improvements in their current operations.
These include the ability to have the lead cleaner tails reporting to the lead rougher feed, and the lead cleaner circuit changing from one larger cell to multiple stages to improve the expected performance of the lead circuit.
They have also sourced power supply for the incremental demand of the processing plant from the Mount Isa grid supply via Combined Cycle Gas Turbines, replacing diesel generation to lower input costs and the carbon dioxide intensity while they are also looking at possible renewable power generation supply.
New Century are also close to implementing a new 1Mtpa ball mill. The ball mill procurement was committed to in early October 2021, under a fixed-price contract, with construction by GR Engineering Services over 85pc complete.
New Century Managing Director Patrick Walta they had achieved a major milestone toward development of Silver King and East Fault Block through obtaining all necessary environmental approvals.
"The Optimisation Study has also reinforced the highly value-accretive potential of the in-situ development at Century, materially expanding the production profile and life of asset while reducing site-wide unit costs," Mr Walta said.
"The results underscore the significant near-term opportunity available via the development of Silver King and East Fault Block that will open up the avenue to continue the utilisation of $2 billion previously invested in infrastructure at Century to 2030 and beyond."
Mr Walta said they were progressing toward completion of debt financing and a final investment decision in the coming months.
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Derek Barry
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
