Name: Drakelands mine
Location: The Drakelands mine is located about 10 km north-east of Plymouth, near Plympton, in Devon, in the UK.
Controlling Company: Wolf Minerals.
Brief History: The discovery of tungsten near Hemerdon mine dates back to 1867.
The first significant workings took place around the time of the First and Second World Wars, when mine plants were built and went into production, although compared with current standards, the operations were relatively small in scale. Operations ceased in 1944, owing to the resumption of shipments of tungsten from abroad.
Attempts during the 1960s and early 1970s to reopen the mine failed, until American mining company AMAX became involved in the mine in the late 1970s and a significant programme of exploratory drilling started in 1977.
In 1981, a planning application was submitted by AMAX to mine tungsten and tin. After a Public Inquiry in 1982, the Secretary of State indicated that improvements to the visual aspects of the processing plant and waste disposal area would be regarded more favourably in a new submission.
A revised plan was submitted in 1985 and this was passed by Devon County Council in 1986, subject to stringent conditions governing the development and operation of the mine.
AMAX discontinued the project development because of a drop in the tungsten price and the project reverted to the landowners on whose land the deposit lies.
In 2007, Wolf Minerals entered into an option agreement with the landowners, and renamed the mine to the Drakelands mine, following some local nomenclature.
The planning permission to mine tungsten at Hemerdon until 2021 was updated by Wolf Minerals in 2011, with the approval of Devon County Council and the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.
Brief Description: The Drakelands mine forms part of the Hemerdon project, which is the third-largest tungsten and tin resource in the world. The project includes a two-stage openpit and three-million-tonne-a-year concentrator with associated infrastructure.
Products: Tin (cassiterite) and tungsten (wolframite).
Geology/Mineralisation: The Hemerdon tungsten deposit is hosted within and around a dyke-like body of porphyritic granite, known as the Hemerdon Granite, which forms a cupola to the extreme south-west of the main body of the Dartmore Granite. The country rock around the Hemerdon Granite is upper Devonian slate with minor basic volcanic rocks.
The northern area of the Hemerdon Granite is a north-north- east-trending dyke, about 140 m wide, dipping steeply to the east. It hosts a stockwork of greisen-bordered quartz veins, bearing wolframite and cassiterite, with minor tourmaline and sulphide minerals.
The drilling has demonstrated that mineralisation continues to 400 m below ground surface.
Reserves: Total proven and probable reserves as at March 25, 2015, were 35.7-million tonnes grading 0.18% of tungsten trioxide and 0.03% tin.
Resources: Total resources as at March 25, 2015, were estimated at 145.2-million tonnes grading 0.15% tungsten trioxide and 0.02% tin.
Mining Method: Openpit.
Major Infrastructure and Equipment: The extraction of tungsten will take place using openpit mining, with the pit measuring 850 m × 450 m and extending to a depth of 200 m. The sides of the pit will be cut in benches to allow for safe working as the mine gets deeper.
The overburden, or waste rock called killas, will be loaded by excavators onto dump trucks and driven on internal haul roads to the mine waste facility in Crownhill Down.
Ore removed from the pit will be taken to the processing plant, which will separate the tungsten and the tin from the gangue using crushing, screening and scrubbing; dense- media separation; deslime and gravity separation; concentrate processing, and tailings thickening and disposal.
Prospects: Commissioning of the processing plant at the Drakelands mine was completed in September.
Contact Person: Media and investor relations James Moses.
Contact Details:
Wolf Minerals,
tel +61 420 991 574,
email james@mandatecorporate.com.au, and
website http://www.wolfminerals.com.au.