JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Toronto-listed Copper Mountain Mining expects to continue to optimise performance at its flagship Copper Mountain mine in 2015 and increase copper production in spite of the slightly lower projected headgrade for the year.

“The new secondary crusher is working well and is providing a consistently finer feed to the [semi-autogenous grinding] mill, which has resulted in a smoother operation with higher throughput,” Copper Mountain noted in a statement this week.

The majority of ore was scheduled to come from Pit 2 at the southern British Columbia mine in 2015.

The planned mining rate for the year was 185 000 t/d and the 2015 copper production forecast of 80-million pounds was based on a mill throughput rate of 37 500 t/d and a mill feed grade of 0.33% copper.

The Copper Mountain mine delivered 81-million pounds of copper, 22 600 oz of gold and 443 700 oz of silver for the year ended December 31.

The company noted that the mine’s mill averaged 89.4% operating time for the year and 11.1-million tons of ore were milled at an average grade of 0.4% of copper over the 12 months. 

Meanwhile, copper production in the fourth quarter was 20.3-million pounds.

The group outlined in a statement that the new secondary crusher that was put into operation in August was now operating at its designed capacity of 3 000 t an operating hour and, following several key adjustments to the secondary crusher circuit at the end of December, “immediate” improvements to mill throughput were seen.

“The mill has started the year on a positive note, with an average throughput of 36 000 t/d in the first half of January, with a 92.2% operating time,” Copper Mountain stated.

During 2014, mining activities continued from both the Pit 2 and Pit 3 areas and averaged about 176 300 t/d, with 60.1-million tons of material mined, including 18.8-million tons of ore and 41.3-million tons of waste.