TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Zinc producer Trevali Mining has declared commercial production at its Caribou mine, in New Brunswick, giving it a second producing zinc mine as an emerging supply gap for the base metal starts to widen.

Located in the province’s Bathurst Mining Camp, Caribou was declared in commercial production effective July 1, after hitting record mine and mill tonnage and throughput, zinc recoveries and concentrate production in June.

"Declaring commercial production at Caribou represents a major milestone for Trevali's second operating zinc mine and strengthens the company's position as the only current primary zinc producer on the TSX poised to benefit from the forecast zinc commodity price rally," president and CEO Dr Mark Cruise stated Thursday.

Trevali advised that it planned to implement its business initiatives in order to continue to optimise operations and ramp up production at the Caribou mine to further boost efficiencies, recovery rates and ultimately metal concentrate production.

June successfully delivered the largest amount of stope tonnes to the mill to date with monthly production increasing to an average of 2 423 t/d. From July onwards mining would start reintroducing development feed tonnage, which in conjunction with other planned improvements, was expected to further boost out rates upwards of 2 700 t/d, the company said.

Trevali expected Caribou to produce 37-million to 41-million pounds of of zinc, 14-million to 15-million pounds of lead and 380 000 oz to 420 000 oz of silver during the six months to December 31. Head grades were expected to range from 5.9% to 6.2% zinc, 2.5% to 2.7% lead and 65 g/t to 70 g/t silver.

The price of zinc had been steadily rising over the past six months, gaining more than a third to $0.94/lb as of Wednesday. Zinc prices had rallied significantly from oversold levels and world supply and demand conditions for zinc were already in deficit, with demand above supply. Analysts expected that prices were likely to surge by late 2016, as concentrate supplies fell to critically low levels.