PERTH (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed Metro Mining, previously known as Metro Coal, has more than doubled the direct shipping ore (DSO) inferred resource at its Bauxite Hills, in Queensland.
The company reported on Tuesday that a 24.9-million-tonne DSO inferred resource had now been estimated at the BH1 deposit, at Bauxite Hills, taking the project’s total inferred DSO resource to 47-million tonnes.
Metro Mining acquired the Bauxite Hills project through the takeover of fellow-listed Cape Alumina at the end of last year.
A prefeasibility study (PFS) previously conducted by Cape Alumina has found that the Bauxite Hills mine could deliver five-million tonnes a year, over a ten-year life. The study proposed that the Bauxite Hills mine would start production at 2.5-million tonnes a year of dry beneficiated bauxite, building to full capacity over a two-year period.
Capital costs for the project have been estimated at between A$234-million and A$250-million, depending on the time and development option chosen for the Bauxite Hills project, with operating costs estimated at between A$24/t and A$27/t.
Metro Mining said on Tuesday that work had now started on a PFS for the Bauxite Hills project, with completion scheduled in February, to coincide with a resource upgrade.
The company noted that the production of a DSO product would allow for the development of a low capital and low operating cost mine, by avoiding a number of significant costs associated with the production of a beneficiated bauxite product.
The project was now being planned as a two-million-tonne-a-year project.
Project approvals were expected by the first half of 2016, and production has been targeted for the third quarter of 2016.