Commercial production of 12-140000 tons of Zinc concentrate from Dugald River Zinc Mine in 2018

SMM, May 7 / PRNewswire-FirstCall-Asianet / Minmetals Resources Board announced that its Dugald River zinc mine operation in Queensland, Australia, was put into commercial production on May 1, 2018. The date of commercial production indicates that the Dugald River mine will be used as an accounting treatment for the operation of the mine rather than the project.

The DugaldRiver project is located in northwest Queensland, Australia, 300km from the century zinc mine to which MMG belongs, and is one of the highest grade zinc ore resources in the world. it has 55 million tons of ore resources and 13.4% zinc grade. Equivalent to 7.37 million tons of zinc metal, and contains considerable lead, silver and other resources. The designed mining and dressing capacity of the mine is 1.7 million tons / year. the zinc concentrate can produce 170000 tons of metal zinc every year. the service life of the mine is about 25 years. because the orebody is opened in the deep, there is the potential to further prolong the service life in the future.

In June 2009, Minmetals acquired the mine through the acquisition of the main assets of OZ Resources. Due to the complexity of DugaldRiver metallogenic geological conditions, since 2010, MMG has carried out several rounds of pre-technical research, mining and mineral processing tests and optimization design, and constantly rammed the project development plan. From 2014 to 2016, with the close cooperation of Chinese and foreign teams, DugaldRiver experimental mining made a breakthrough, on the basis of which the project renewal and development plan was completed, and the construction cost was greatly reduced.

The DugaldRiver project is the only large zinc mine currently under construction in the world and will provide important employment, economic development and tax opportunities for Queensland, Australia, over the next 30 years. The DugaldRiver project has been identified as a state key project in Queensland and will become one of the top 10 zinc mines in the world when it goes into production.