Name: Baita Plai mine.

Location: Baita Plai is located in the Bihor County of Romania, in the Apuseni mountain region.

Mine Owner/s: Vast Resources (80%).

Brief Description: Baita Plai is a polymetallic mine, in Transylvania, an area that hosts Romania’s biggest polymetallic and uranium mines. The mine is expected to be one of the lowest-cost per-tonne copper producers from 2021.

Brief History: Mining activities have been recorded in the Baita Plai area as far back as 1270, with the extraction of iron from bauxites.

Over the years, mining progressed to the extraction of gold and silver from alluvial sources, with copper extraction being recorded in the 1540s before advancing to complex polymetallic ore processing during the eighteenth century.

Bismuth and molybdenum mining and processing started in the early 1900s, with the mine being a significant source of both metals during World War I and II. After World War II, the mine was closed, but reopened in 1952 and started activities on the molybdenum and the polymetallic sections of the mine. The mine was modernised from the 1960s, with the current shaft infrastructure being developed and used in place of the adits and internals inclines used before this.

The mine continued to operate at variable levels of production, with sporadic stoppages until 2009 when the mine closed.

In 2011, a Chinese investor acquired Mineral Mining, the owners of the mine at the time. Mineral Mining operated the mine from early 2012 until it was put on care and maintenance in March 2013. At the time, the mine was producing one polymetallic concentrate containing copper, lead, zinc gold and silver, with additional elements such as bismuth and molybdenum.

Mineral Mining was acquired by African Consolidated Resources, a Romanian subsidiary of Vast Resources, in 2015. During 2018, the association licence was received and Vast Baita Plai, formerly African Consolidated Resources, started refurbishment work. Concentrate production started under Vast’s operating control in October 2020.

Primary Metals/Minerals: Polymetals – copper, lead, zinc, molybdenum, bismuth, silver and gold.

Secondary Metals/Minerals: None stated.

Geology/Mineralisation: Baita Plai is a skarn deposit, comprising several veins in calcareous sediments in eight distinct pipes.

Reserves: None stated.

Resources: Total mineral resources on a 100% basis as at October 31, 2020, were estimated 608-million tonnes grading 1.11% copper, 0.29% lead, 0.3% zinc, 0.02% molybdenum, 0.09% bismuth, 66.87 g/t silver and 0.45 g/t gold.

Mining Method: Underground – overhand cut-and-fill. About 80% of the orebody is excavated as ore. Low-grade areas are preferentially left as support pillars or, together with waste material, used as backfill in the stopes to fill the void and create working platforms for the drilling and blasting of the hanging wall.

Major Infrastructure and Equipment: The mine comprises several vertical and subvertical shafts. Excavated ore is removed from the stopes using 1 m³ pneumatic powered loaders and loaded into 1m³ rail wagons.

Once the rail wagons are hoisted to surface, they are loaded into a rotating tipper where the ore is tipped into two underground silos capable of holding 500 t each. The ore is drawn from the silos using pneumatic powered chute controllers and loaded into 3 m³ rail wagons on Level 6, which exits the mine. The ore is transported by battery locomotive on surface for about 800 m, where it is discharged into one of four surface silos at the processing plant.

Oscillating feeders draw ore from the silos and feed a conveyor belt that, in turn, feeds the primary crusher. From the primary crusher, the material is fed over a double deck vibrating screen, with undersize material transferred to the mill silo and oversize material passing through a secondary crusher system of two jaw crushers and then being added to the mill silos. There are two mill silos with capacities of 450 t and 550 t feeding two ball mills.

Waste tailings from the processing plant are pumped about 7 km by pipeline to the Fanatea tailings storage facility (TSF) located in the village district of Campani. The TSF has two penstocks where the tailings are discharged and settled.

Prospects: A metallurgical testwork programme was undertaken in 2020, with three samples representing high-grade copper mineralisation, a polymetallic copper/lead/zinc mineralisation and a copper/molybdenum ore. All three types of mineralisation contain gold and silver mineralisation.

Contact Details:
Vast Resources
Tel +44 207 846 0974
Email info@vastplac.com
Website https://www.vastplc.com/) 2 0974