Westminer’s Gays River mill producing zinc concentrates

The mill at Gays River, N.S., is once again producing lead and zinc concentrates under the direction of owner Westminer Canada, the 100% owned affiliate of Australia- based Western Mining. When Westminer acquired the 1,350-ton-per-day facility in 1987 along with the gold and base mining assets of Seabright Resources, it expected to use the mill to process ore from the Beaver Dam and Forest Hill gold deposits.

But when reserves and head grades at the Seabright gold mines proved much lower than anticipated, Westminer converted the Gays River mill back to zinc-lead processing.

Since about mid-January the now substantially downgraded facility has been treating stockpiled ore and high-grade material from the Gays River zinc-lead mine at a rate of 800 tons per day, five days a week.

“Our intention is to expand the mine’s capacity and upgrade the mill over time to its original capacity,” superintendent Ross MacFarlane told The Northern Miner.

“We are looking at milling about 200,000 tons over the next 12 months,” he said.

At an average grade of 7.5% zinc and 4.5% lead, the material being put through the mill is lower than that treated by former mine owner Esso Minerals before the facility was shut down in 1981.

Due to the complex hydrogeological domain and sinuous nature of the orebody, Esso suffered severe grade control problems before the mill and mine property were sold to Seabright at a fire sale price.

“Basically, we have taken their (Esso Minerals) knowledge base and expanded on it a bit,” said MacFarlane. “Our approach is to mine across narrower widths so that we can react more quickly to changes in direction of the ore,” he said.

A preliminary reserve estimate at Gays River is 1.8 million tons grading 6.2% lead and 10% zinc, according to Westminer’s 1989 annual report.