PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Base metals miner New Century Resources on Tuesday said that initial investigations into the Mt Lyell copper mine, in Tasmania, have so far confirmed that the project could be viable.

New Century is undertaking a restart study on the Mt Lyell copper project, after entering into an option agreement over the mine in November of last year.

Mt Lyell has 135-million tonnes of mineral resource containing 1.1-million tonnes of copper and 0.94-million ounces of gold across various underground and openpit deposits. The site includes a tailings storage facility, containing 42-million tonnes of historic tailings, and development work over the last few years has highlighted the potential for tailings retreatment to recover remnant copper, gold and cobalt.

As part of the option agreement, New Century is also investigating the refurbishment or replacement of the existing infrastructure for tailings reprocessing, with subsequent integration of sustainable in-situ ore processing to follow.

New Century said on Tuesday that initial studies at the project had confirmed the suitability of sub-level cave mining for future underground operations, and that existing underground workings would allow for direct access to the ore. The initial work has also confirmed the existing flow sheet suitability, while proposing a partial modernisation of the existing plant.

The restart study would look at establishing logistics networks from the mine to Burnie port, to facilitate global export options, and would look to the availability of renewable hydroelectric power to power the restarted operations.

New Century will also undertake ore reserve definition to convert some of the existing measured and indicated mineral resource into the reserve category, and a mineral resource and ore reserve update is targeted for later this year.

The option agreement over the Mt Lyell project will see New Century spending a minimum of $10-million on the project area over a two-year option period, towards the development, exploration and reimbursement of care-and-maintenance costs.