The Carrapateena mine’s processing plant has achieved a capacity throughput of 500mt/hr, according to OZ Minerals.
The plant, which produced its first copper concentrate in December 2019 underwent some more construction upgrades and final commissioning tasks in January and February this year, before achieving this milestone, according to Andrew Cole, chief executive officer, OZ Minerals.
The processing plant, which is part of the South Australian miner’s Carrapateena mine project achieved a runtime of more than 90pc over a 24-hour period, producing concentrate grades that had over 40pc copper.
The company now plans to continue testing and optimizing the plant through the first half of 2020, to get it ready for increased output from the mine and a ramp-up in refining capacity in the second half of the year.
The Carrapateena processing plant also consists of an underground crusher and conveyor system that are now operational. Furthermore, OZ Minerals plans to use its optimized mine design to increase production throughput run rate to to 4.25mt per year by the end of 2020 and further increase its to 4.7-5mt per year by 2023.