LONDON (Alliance News) - Rambler Metals & Mining PLC is setting up a dense media separation demonstration plant as one option for developing its prospective Lower Footwall copper region in Newfoundland without the substantial capital expenditure linked with building a new processing facility on the site, executives say.
?We?re looking at Dense Media Separation in order to pre-concentrate the ore at the Lower Footwall. From tests we?ve seen about a 40% reduction in waste, and the grade of the concentrate looks like its being upgraded by a multiple of 1.6, so you?re looking at a grade of 1.4% being brought up to around 2% copper by the process," Corporate Secretary Peter Mercer said in an interview with Alliance News.
Dense Media Separation is a process that uses water to separate heavier liquid particles in a flotation process, increasing the resource grade and recovery of certain metals.
The Canadian copper and gold producer operates in the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador. Its Lower Footwall zone currently has a resource of 18.2 million tonnes at 1.43% copper, but developing a brand new facility at the site would be costly, and so the company is considering the benefits of dense media separation creating a pre-concentrate which would then be processed at the Nugget Pond mill nearby.
The company already crushes and grinds ore from its nearby Ming mine at its Nugget Pond mill, but has the capacity to crush more there, and so bringing in ore from Lower Footwall would better utilise the mill, which is being expanded.
?One of the ways were looking to grow production is initially through optimization of the mill at Nugget Pond," Chief Executive Norm Williams told Alliance News. ?We're looking at increasing the crushing at its plant, in the hope to get up to 850 or 950 tonnes per day, increasing throughput from our current 630 tonnes per day annual production just now.?
In order to reach what the company calls its second phase of development at the Lower Footwall site, Rambler now plans to get the demonstration plant in later this year, enabling it to develop a pre-feasibility study for the region by the middle of 2015.
?Adding the Lower Footwall could give the overall site a mine life of around 20 years," Mercer said. ?It will bring us up into a different kind of copper space. We?re currently producing between 20,000 and 24,000 tonnes of copper concentrate per year. With full-scale production of 2,000 tonnes of pre-concentrate per day from the Lower Footwall, that should bring us up into in excess of 55,000 tonnes per year.?
The company is currently comfortably reaching its gold copper concentrate target for the Ming mine of 20,000 to 24,000 dry metric tonnes for its full year, after having produced 19,648 metric tonnes in the first nine months of its year ending April 30.
?We?re looking to get the top end of our production guidance for the full year, were pretty close to having already hit the lower end in mid-June," Williams said.
?Our 2015 guidance will be similar to 2014, but based on our staged development process, we?d hope to increase and improve that into 2016," Mercer added.
The company's eventual plan is to become the biggest mine operator and resource developer in Atlantic Canada. It holds a range of interests and assets in the region which could all add to its production in time.
Rambler said earlier in June that its pretax profit for the third quarter of its financial year rose to CAD3.3 million, from CAD193,000 for the same period a year earlier, supported by stable production and lower administrative expenses.
As a result, the company said at the time that it was now debt free and profitable, and it would now focus on optimising its copper-gold assets while exploring new opportunities.
Rambler Metals & Mining shares were down 2.5% to 25.10 pence on Wednesday.
By Tom McIvor; tommcivor@alliancenews.com; @TomMcIvor1
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