JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – An updated mine plan for metals developer Rex Minerals on Monday showed that its flagship copper project in South Australia would deliver over 75 000 t/y of copper, 60 000 oz/y of gold and over 1.2-million tonnes a year of iron-ore concentrate during the first 10 years.
The Hillside copper project’s mine plan also defined an estimated A$2.5-billion in after-tax cash flows during the same period.
“The larger ore reserve and strong cash flows expected from the new production plan are a huge boost to our funding plans at Hillside,” said Rex MD Mark Parry.
This followed the company’s announcement last week of a 50% increase in mineral resources – reaching about 180-million tonnes, at 0.52% copper, 0.13 g/t gold and 14.4% iron – underpinning the first 12 years of production and delivering the potential to expand the openpit operations beyond the current planned estimated 12-year capacity.
Last week, Rex commented in a statement that about 64% of the two-million tonnes of contained copper mineral resource was classified measured and indicated, with 72% of this converted to proved and probable reserves.
“We continue to progress the debt funding package associated with a fixed-price construction contract to the level of $550-million and expect that the remainder of our funding will come together on the strength of our feasibility study results,” he added.
Rex Mineral’s bankable feasibility study was expected to be finalised later this year.
Hillside would be commissioned in 2015 and reach full production capacity by 2016.