Market and product
China, Japan firms sign major copper deal
Sinosteel will also source equipment and arrange shipping to the port of Townsville. The project is scheduled to begin operations in late 2012, subject to approval by the Queensland regulators.
The company said in a statement that the Directors of CuDeco have entered into a contract to supply all of the Process Plant components and structures with Sinosteel for the Rocklands Group Copper Project. "To ensure the company’s forecast timeframe for the commencement of production is met, it required a commitment from the Company to secure this supply," it said.
The Company has completed an exhausting and continuous 4 year metallurgical testwork programme from more than 5 independent metallurgical laboratories, and is now entering the final design phase. Independent consultants involved in the project include China’s largest metallurgical and process group, China Nerin Engineering Co Ltd, which was awarded the final design contract for the BHP Billiton Giant Olympic Dam Copper Project in S.A., and Lycopodium Minerals (Qld) Pty Ltd which has been involved in the preliminary studies for the Rocklands project. The Company has now entered this new and exciting phase.
"This decision to enter the production phase was approved by the board which expeditiously advanced the Company’s agreement for supply of the 3M tonnes per annum Mineral Processing Plant for the Company’s World Class Rocklands Copper Project The process plant will include circuits for the native copper metal recovery, and flotation circuits for the supergene and primary sulphide zones," it said.
Sinosteel will source the equipment from all over the globe, including China and under the agreement will arrange shipping to the Port of Townsville. Although not all of the mineral process equipment is being manufactured in China, Sinosteel have been appointed the supplier including water treatment and equipment for dewatering of tailings and return process water. Sinosteel one of the world’s largest suppliers of mining equipment and projects in more than 70 countries were selected as our preferred supplier. Australian companies will also be quoting on some of the components under the umbrella of Sinosteel.
The Rocklands Group Copper Project has a unique style of mineralisation, only common in one other location in the world. The identical style of mineralisation is a copper deposit in Michigan U.S., that produced over 6 million tonnes of copper, predominately native copper metal, during its lifetime. The Rocklands copper project is located 15 km from the regional township of Cloncurry in NW Queensland and approx. 90 km east of Mt Isa. The Cloncurry/Mt Isa region is the largest known copper belt located within Australia and one of the largest known copper mineral fields in the Southern Hemisphere.
The 3 million tonne per year process plant will be fully computerised and automated. As well as incorporating a conventional flotation plant to treat supergene and primary ores, it incorporates a simple, but highly effective circuit to treat and recover the high grade native copper zones from within the Rocklands Orebodies. The process plant for the native copper circuit includes German crushing technology, the High Pressure Grinding Rolls (HPGR) which enables clean separation of the gangue material from the native copper. HPGR technology is becoming more and more common in Australian resource processing industries and has performed outstandingly during the metallurgical testwork for the Rocklands Project.
To achieve the clean separation required, a new, but highly effective jig from German company, allmineral, is used following the HPGR and wet screening. This new type of jig is used in the South African Ferrochrome slag separation circuits and for separating iron ore from gangue material at BHP Billiton’s, Whyalla, S.A. operation, and has tested and proven to provide clean and highly efficient separation of the native copper from the host rock. Recovery of native copper in the final bulk testwork for the -40, +4mm fraction size using the ‘alljig’ already completed, has shown a separation rate of 99% of the native copper from the host rock and ore.
The manufacturer of the equipment believes they can increase the recovery through the jig process for this size fraction, (which consists of principally, the larger native copper metal nuggets) to over 99.5% due to the significant difference in SG of the native copper and the host rock. Similar results are expected from the -4mm, +1mm fraction size, based on testwork to date. (The updated process flowsheet is given in Fig 1 below).
The recoveries of the minerals including the primary ore, supergene ore and the native copper have been outstanding and to ensure thoroughness more than $4.4m has been expended on exhaustive metallurgical testwork to ensure maximum recoveries.
Three months of the total programme of 5 months of flotation of chalcopyrite, chalcocite, supergene and native copper testwork at Nagrom and Ammtech metallurgical laboratories has been completed. The testwork is also being monitored by Mr Arthur Hunt, CuDeco’s Technical Manager, a qualified metallurgist and mechanical engineer formerly holding senior technical and operational positions at BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam and Oz Minerals’ Prominent Hill. .
CuDECO Ltd is a mining company that specialises in copper exploration and production. In 1995 the company purchased a mining tenement known as EPM 13049 which covers an area of some 2200 hectares. The EPM encompasses numerous old historical copper mines which have produced high grade ore.
In 2006 the company discovered a previously undiscovered zone of copper, cobalt and gold mineralisation which has a strike length today of over 1250m. The company is currently drilling the 1250m length of the mineralised zone which was named Las Minerale.
In addition there are five subordinate shears that run sub-parallel to Las Minerale with a width of over 1km. This zone is known as Central Rocklands and Southern Rocklands. The project within the EPM 13049 is collectively known as the “Rocklands Group Copper Project”.
