East West ships con from Caribou

Owned and operated by East West Minerals of Australia, the mine began producing ore again late last fall.

With 10.9 million tonnes of proven, probable and possible reserves (using a 12% combined lead plus zinc cut-off grade over a minimum width of 1.5 m) the underground mine has the capacity to produce about 700,000 tonnes of ore per year operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Costs are estimated to be around $35 per tonne.

Mining is by cut and fill methods and ore is trucked up a ramp driven at a grade of 20%.

Concentrate production this year should total about 126,000 tonnes.

A new 2,000-tonne-per-day mill constructed on the property appears to have performed very well. Concentrate grades in the first shipment were 32.45% zinc, 10.21% lead, 275 g silver and 1.45 g gold per tonne; very close to initial projections.

The Australian Mining and Smelting (Europe) smelter in Avonmouth, Bristol, England, will charge East West a treatment charge of about $8.50 per tonne of concentrate. But even with this charge, the mine should make a profit of about $25 million this year, The Northern Miner calculates based on current metals prices.

Some 340,000 tonnes of supergene-enriched copper was mined from the top of the deposit in the early 1980s by Anaconda Minerals using open pit methods. Anaconda then sold the property to East West for $1 million in December, 1986.

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