https://www.miningweekly.com

Nova mine, Australia

14th February 2020

By: Sheila Barradas

Creamer Media Research Coordinator & Senior Deputy Editor

     

Font size: - +

Name: Nova mine.

Location: The project is located 160 km east-north-east of Norseman and 380 km north-east of Esperance, in Western Australia.

Mine Owner/s: Independence Group (IGO).

Brief Description: The Nova mine is a greenfield high-grade nickel/copper/cobalt deposit located in the Fraser Range. The Ngadju people are the Traditional Owners and custodians of this area, with their native title recognised by the Federal Court in November 2014.

Nova has a mine life of eight years at a processing rate of 1.5-million tonnes a year.

Brief History: The Nova zone of the Nova-Bollinger deposit was discovered in 2012. In 2013, the Bollinger zone was discovered by drilling and tracking the thin mineralised conduit that trends east from the Nova zone.

Development of the Nova deposit started in January 2015. Commercial production started in July 2017 and the operation reached nameplate production in the September 2017 quarter.

Primary Metals: Copper and nickel/copper/cobalt concentrates.

Secondary Metals: Not stated.

Geology/Mineralisation: Nova-Bollinger is situated within the 425-km- × 50-km-wide, Mesoproterozoic-age Fraser zone of the Albany-Fraser Orogen. The Fraser zone is fault-bounded by the Biranup zone to the north-east, and the Nornalup zone to the south-east. The Arid basin forms the basement to the Fraser zone, while the Snowys dam formation of the Arid basin is the basement in the Nova-Bollinger area.

The rocks within the Nova-Bollinger area are consistent with the regional descriptions of the Snowys dam formation and include pelitic to psammitic gneisses and a local carbonate unit, along with metamorphosed mafic and volcanoclastic rocks. The Nova-Bollinger mafic-ultramafic sill complex that hosts the Nova-Bollinger deposit is a doubly plunging synformal structure, where a magnetite-bearing footwall gneiss has been identified as the reason behind‘ The Eye’ magnetic feature.

Nova-Bollinger’s mineralisation is spatially correlated to a mafic magmatic conduit known as the Nova Gabbro, from which sulphides are interpreted to have been precipitated and accumulated within the conduit and the fracture zones surrounding this source intrusion. The mineralisation is interpreted to have been emplaced in a dynamic environment, at peak metamorphism, with much of the mineralisation remobilised into structures and/or fracture zones surrounding the Nova Gabbro.

Reserves: Total reserves as at December 31, 2018, were estimated at 11.5-million tonnes grading 1.9%, 0.76% copper and 0.06% cobalt.

Resources: Total measured resources as at December 31, 2018, were estimated at 13.2-million tonnes grading 2% nickel, 0.8% copper and 0.07% cobalt.

Mining Method: Shallow underground through a decline, with open stoping and paste backfill.  

Major Infrastructure and Equipment: Ore is processed through IGO’s Nova 1.5-million-tonne-a-year concentrator.

Prospects: IGO has made significant breakthroughs in the interpretation of the three-dimensional seismic dataset that covers the Nova mining lease. This was a result of IGO being able to predict the location of the mafic and ultramafic intrusions that may host nickel/copper sulphide mineralisation at depths exceeding 500 m. Deep drilling through these targets confirmed the presence of thick (500 m to 1 000 m) mafic-ultramafic intrusions, similar in size and composition to the Nova upper intrusion, carrying widespread three-phase iron/nickel/copper sulphide disseminations and blebs.

Contact Details:
IGO
Tel +61 8 9238 8300
Email contact@igo.com.au
Website https://www.igo.com.au

 

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

Comments

The content you are trying to access is only available to subscribers.

If you are already a subscriber, you can Login Here.

If you are not a subscriber, you can subscribe now, by selecting one of the below options.

For more information or assistance, please contact us at subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za.

Option 1 (equivalent of R125 a month):

Receive a weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine
(print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
Receive daily email newsletters
Access to full search results
Access archive of magazine back copies
Access to Projects in Progress
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format

Option 2 (equivalent of R375 a month):

All benefits from Option 1
PLUS
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports, in PDF format, on various industrial and mining sectors including Electricity; Water; Energy Transition; Hydrogen; Roads, Rail and Ports; Coal; Gold; Platinum; Battery Metals; etc.

Already a subscriber?

Forgotten your password?

MAGAZINE & ONLINE

SUBSCRIBE

RESEARCH CHANNEL AFRICA

SUBSCRIBE

CORPORATE PACKAGES

CLICK FOR A QUOTATION