15th Apr 2010
Source: Australian Mining
OZ Minerals this morning reported solid production figures for the first quarter of the year at its Prominent Hill copper-gold mine in South Australia.
The mine produced 31,909 tonnes of copper and 41,572 ounces of gold in the quarter, which the company said was above expectations.
While the copper results were down from 36,497 tonnes in the corresponding period in 2009, the gold production increased by around a third from 30,526 ounces in 2009.
Accordingly, the company has upgraded its expectations for average annual gold production up to 2012 to between 110,000 and 120,000 ounces per annum.
Previously, the mine was expected to produce between 80,000 and 90,000 ounces of gold per annum.
The annual copper production averages up to 2012 have remained at between 100,000 and 110,000 tonnes.
The mine also produced 202,017 ounces of silver in the quarter, down from 339,937 ounces in the first quarter of 2009.
The company said production is expected to be higher in the first quarter than the subsequent quarters because the head grade is expected to decline as the year progresses.
"Elevated gold production was due to mining and treatment of higher grade gold ore than planned," the company said.
"Gold-only ore mined for the quarter was 506 kilotonnes, with very high gold grades of 2.3 grams per tonne.
"Most of this gold ore was included in the Prominent Hill resource, however, not in within the current mine plan."
According to OZ, the ore mined in the period was lower than that of previous quarters.
However the company said this did not have any impact on production, because there were significant stockpiles of ore available for draw-down.
"Ore mining operations were affected on occasions by truck driver availability, an abnormal number of wet weather events and mining constraints associated with final pit wall remediation work after earlier pit sloughing events," the company said.
"Mill utilisation for the quarter was below plan at around 88%, as a result of a five day power outage caused by a severe storm that toppled a number of overhead power poles on the borefield.
"Sales were lower than production due to rain events impeding transport through the Adelaide to Darwin Railway.
"During the quarter plans were advanced for initiating concentrate shipments through Port Adelaide and the first shipment from this port will be made in mid-April."
The miner will also add another excavator and several associated trucks to its vehicle fleet in the fourth quarter of this year.
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