Broken Hammer, Ontario
Photo by: Wallbridge Mining Corp
TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – TSX- and Frankfurt Stock Exchange-listed Wallbridge Mining on Wednesday reported revenue of $4.7-million from the Broken Hammer copper/platinum-group metals (PGMs) project, in Ontario.
The junior said it had last month achieved the targeted production rate of 800 t/d at the mine and at the Redstone mill.
To date, Wallbridge had delivered more than 1 000 t of copper concentrate containing net payable metals of more than 750 000 lb of copper, 1 400 oz of palladium, 750 oz of platinum, 4 000 oz of silver and 400 oz of gold to the copper smelter, and 12 t of high-grade gravity concentrate was shipped to a European smelter for refining PGMs averaging more than 700 g/t of platinum, palladium and gold.
Using a combination of current metal prices and hedged prices, Wallbridge estimated smelter revenues of $4.7-million, net of all smelting and refining charges.
Mining at the just-more-than $1-million Broken Hammer openpit started in June and site construction, including roads and the water treatment pond, was completed in August.
During this time, Wallbridge shipped about 44 000 t of ore to the Redstone mill in Timmins, which is operated by TSX-V-listed Northern Sun Mining.
"As is typical with every start-up project, we faced some challenges in the first couple of months with [regard to] achieving mining rates [owing] to unusually wet weather and with milling [as a result of] lower-than-expected platinum and gold recoveries.
“Our copper and palladium recoveries are now better than expected and the platinum and gold recoveries are closer to the expected range. The project production rate is now on budget and additional modifications are being implemented to further improve platinum and gold recoveries,” Wallbridge president and CEO Marz Kord said.
The Broken Hammer project is an openpit operation expected to extract about 195 000 t of in-pit copper/nickel/PGM mineral reserve. The ore will be transported to Northern Sun’s Redstone facility, in Timmins, Ontario, with the concentrates subsequently being under contract with a nearby copper smelter.
The mining was expected to be complete within 10 to 12 months, at an average rate of about 800 t/d.