Oz Minerals says it has brought forward plans to close the open pit at its Prominent Hill mine in outback South Australia to the first quarter of next year from mid-2018 as work on its underground extension continues towards completion.
The company said in its third quarter production and exploration report yesterday at that the move is expected to reduce open-pit mining costs for this by about 5%.
“An optimised mine plan has been identified and implemented to accelerate mining of the open pit and bring forward its closure to Q1 2018 from mid-2018., Oz said yesterday.
"As a result, open pit unit mining costs guided for 2017 have been revised downward to $7.00 to $7.25 (from $7.25 to $7.75) with net fixed cost savings of circa $10 million over the remaining open pit life. In August, the open pit also reached the milestone of 100Mt of ore mined since commencement in 2008.”
Oz Minerals said copper production continued to rise in the latest quarter as it targeted accelerated mining of the open pit at its Prominent Hill operations in South Australia before its closure.
Copper production hit 28,880 tonnes in the third quarter, up 2.5% on the June quarter, while gold production fell to 29,264 troy ounces from 32,136 ounces. In the September quarter of 2016 Oz produced 28,756 tonnes of copper production and 28,466 ounces.
Work on the first phase of development at the company’s Carrapateena copper-gold deposit in South Australia is underway, and Oz Minerals said key contracts have been agreed and order placed for some items for the process plant.
OZ said the quarter also saw its cash balance increase to $639 million from $625 million in Q2, after investment into Carrapateena ($12 million), ore inventory ($17 million), interim dividend payment ($18 million) and an increase in receivables ($53 million).
And studies into the West Musgrave project "have been completed on resource and geotechnical modelling, metallurgical testing and process plant design. Financial modelling is progressing on development options and we plan to make a decision in mid Q4 on progressing the project to PFS in collaboration with our partner Cassini Resources.
"Overall, this has been a strong production and costs quarter that has seen us take full advantage of copper price increases to grow our cash balance while starting work on enabling infrastructure at Carrapateena,” the company said yesterday. OZ Minerals shares rose 1.5% to $8.17.
