Taseko spends $100M on Gibraltar mine equipment

Vancouver-based Taseko Mines (TKO-T, TGB-X) has purchased $100 million worth of mining and milling equipment from Bucyrus International (BUCY-N).

The equipment was bought to help with the phase-three expansion at the company’s Gibraltar copper- molybdenum mine in south-central British Columbia.

The order includes two Bucyrus 495 mining shovels, a Bucyrus 49R production drill, four 240-tonne Terex haulage trucks and a 28-ft. semi-autogenous grinding (SAG) mill.

The equipment will be delivered over the course of two years with the trucks arriving later this year, the first shovel and the drill arriving in spring 2009, the second shovel in late 2009 and the SAG mill and motors in May 2010 with plans to have them up and running by August.

“Since the phase-three expansion requires a relatively small SAG mill, delivery time has been reduced to twenty months from the industry average of forty months,” Russell Hallbauer, president and CEO of Taseko said in a statement.

The SAG mill is expected to add an additional 30,000 tonnes of capacity per day at the project. By the fourth quarter of 2010, Taseko expects to increase Gibraltar’s production capacity to 85,000 tonnes per day.

“A key component to the phase-three expansion is a $20-million upgrade to the molybdenum circuit, which is expected to be operational by the summer of 2009,” Hallbauer said.

The upgraded circuit is expected to increase average molybdenum production to 3.5 million lbs. annually.