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JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Aim-listed Chromex Mining has restarted mining at its Stellite opencast chrome mine in South Africa.
The company noted in a statement on Tuesday that improved pricing and chrome market conditions had led to the drawdown of its run-of-mine (ROM) stockpiles in the past six months, prompting it to restart mining.
Last year, mining had been halted to allow the existing stockpiles to be used up during the commissioning of the processing plant at the mine.
The Stellite mine, which is situated on the western limb of the Bushveld Complex, would initially restart at about 20 000-t/m ROM, which would increase to 40 000-t/m ROM when a dense-media separation (DMS) circuit is installed at the beneficiation plant by the third quarter of this year.
The installation of the DMS, along with the capacity increase at the mine, would allow the chrome-miner to market a sized lumpy chrome product, in addition to chemical and metallurgical grade concentrates, the company stated.
“Despite the challenging chrome market conditions over the past year, we have continued to invest in our operations, channelling our focus into building a cost-efficient producing chrome mine at Stellite. In this vein, with market conditions beginning to improve, and a solid orebody containing [about] 31,9-million tons of chromite to utilise, we feel that the time is right to recommence our mining operations and deliver an uplift in value for shareholders in 2010,” Chromex CEO Russell Lamming said.
