Photo by: Reuters
TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Turquoise Hill Resources, a subsidiary of diversified major Rio Tinto, on Tuesday reported that the rake arms in one of the two tailings thickeners at the Oyu Tolgoi copper/gold mine had failed again.
Having started production during last year, output at the massive mine was heavily impacted by post-commissioning issues during the first quarter, including rake blade failures in the tailings thickeners, which caused the shutdown of one production line for about seven weeks.
The Vancouver-based miner on Tuesday said an investigation was under way to determine the root cause of the failure. Repairs had already started.
Turquoise Hill, which owns a 66% stake in the mine, noted that the concentrator continued to operate at about 60% capacity using the second thickener.
The Oyu Tolgoi mine was expected to produce between 135 000 t and 160 000 t of copper and between 600 000 oz and 700 000 oz of gold in concentrates for 2014.
The mine is about 550 km south of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital city, and 80 km north of the Mongolia-China border.