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QUeensLAnD

Century claws

back into top 10

he New Century Resources Ltd man- fleet as part of
Tagement team is determined not to let the ramp-up to 12
anything destroy their long-held vision of mtpa.
re-establishing the historic Century mine Walta believes
as a top 10 global zinc producer. his company now
Despite the zinc price continuing to fall has a good handle
amid the coronavirus pandemic, Century on how to run the
remains on track to hit its targeted run operation after a
rate of 12 mpta before the end of the fi- challenging start
nancial year. to life as a zinc
Barring any unexpected operational producer.
setbacks, New Century intends to de- “We’ve obvious-
clare commercial production when the ly got a lot more
clock ticks over into FY2021. experience in op-
“It’s really what the team set out to erating the plant The upgraded rougher circuit which is the centrepiece of the
achieve when we started this process,” and in hydraulic refurbished Century processing plant. Throughput will be
New Century managing director Patrick mining, there’s no progressively ramped up from 9 mtpa to 12 mtpa over the next
Walta told Paydirt. two ways about it,” three months
“The tailings dam is the initial starter he said.
operation, we have a whole suite of in- “What we haven’t
situ resources and a big exploration pro- done to date, or perhaps the opportunity time to stabilise, we’ll slow it down.”
gramme planned for the next few years, we haven’t had to date, is stability. Every Walta also insisted there was no more
but ultimately it was about restarting and three months or so, we’ve been bringing capital to be spent on refurbishing the
re-establishing Century as a top 10 zinc on a new piece of kit in this plant and it’s Century plant and the company’s atten-
producer and we’re sort of knocking on just created a wave of instability as you tion was turning to getting the most value
the door of that, which is really exciting. recommission it and rebalance the plant. out of its product.
“As we utilise the additional 35% ca- Maximising recoveries and maximising However, what has proved difficult for
pacity that we’ve added to the plant, we production from flotation operations is all the company is selling concentrate into
should be able to progress further into about stability. a zinc market which, at the time of print,
the top 10 over the next 6-12 months. “It’s good that we’ve learnt so much had slumped to four-year lows and was
We’re certainly a significant scale opera- along the journey, but it’s really only from also being further whacked by additional
tion in the scheme of things for the zinc now and over the next couple of months treatment charges.
industry.” as we get to 12 mtpa that we can enjoy a “Those treatment charges are current-
Walta’s optimism stems from a pro- stable flow rate, with no new pieces of kit ly at about 15-year highs, so when you
longed commissioning period at Century coming on and a team that is just purely combine the two together, the return to
– 250km north-west of Mt Isa – which focused on that fine-tune button, so to the miner is probably the worst it’s been
culminated in late February with the ini- speak.” since well before the GFC,” Walta said.
tiation of slurry commissioning of the up- Overall unit costs are also expected “Since we started operations, treat-
graded rougher circuit, allowing the full to reduce as metal production increases ment charges have gone from about
capacity of the entire processing plant against the 70% fixed cost base on site. $US40/t to over $US300/t, so that’s ab-
to be incorporated into operations for the Walta did not rule out hitting the de- solutely brutal as an additional cost to us.
first time since the mine was re-opened sired 12 mtpa run rate ahead of schedule However, there was a recent report put
in mid-2018. if operations warranted a faster ramp-up, out by Macquarie Research that shows
Throughput will be progressively in- however, he insisted the company would treatment charges have dropped from
creased from 9 mtpa to 12 mtpa over the not be taking any risks along the way. $SU310/t to $US280/t over the last cou-
next three months. “If it was unencumbered, we’d feed the ple of weeks, which is a really important
In what may prove to be the most im- plant tomorrow with 12 mtpa, but what sign.
portant modification to the process plant, we don’t want is to unnecessarily upset “The treatment charges moving is the
the upgraded rougher circuit is set to the operations now by just having a mas- real sign the zinc market and base met-
induce further increases to overall zinc sive increase in throughput,” he said, als in general might be starting to turn,
metal production, with the additional “It’s really a measured and managed and we’ll obviously look to take advan-
volumetric capacity allowing both higher approach so that by the time we get to tage of that with a fully ramped up opera-
throughput rates and improved recover- June 30, we’re exiting the financial year tion at Century.”
ies. at that run rate. If we find we’re achiev- – Michael Washbourne
A fourth and final mining cannon will ing it easily, we’ll obviously speed up that
also be added to the hydraulic mining process. Conversely, if we need more

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