IN FULL GEAR
Heron Resources has a lot to celebrate, with underground mining now underway at its flagship Woodlawn zinc-copper project, and commissioning on track to begin by the end of this year.
HERON’S high-grade Woodlawn project in NSW is a highly prospective zinc-copper deposit, 50km northeast of Canberra.
Following the completion of its Feasibility Study in mid-2016, underground mining began at the project in September, with commissioning expected to commence within the next couple of months and first shipment marked for the first quarter of 2019.
The high-grade, long-life mine is well placed to participate in a zinc market facing a significant supply shortfall, producing on average 40,000 tonnes of zinc in concentrate annually, and by-products such as copper, lead, gold and silver.
Heron Resources chief executive and managing director Wayne Taylor said the key focus for the company at the moment was operational readiness.
“We are getting all of our operation personnel on board as well as all of the supplies that will allow us to meet the demands the project puts on us for consumables and other bits and pieces,” Mr Taylor said.
“Also the supporting systems that ensure we have the right training in place and support infrastructure to make sure that it holds together.”
Project Developments
During the September quarter, the miner received the final assay results for its extensional and infill drilling program of its shallow G2 Lens.
“The results are quite exciting to us and are typically a little bit higher in precious metals,” Mr Taylor said.
“In fact we have received some of the highest precious metal grades that the project has ever seen.
“The reason we like those is because it does report through to the concentrates and makes the value of the concentrate considerably more than what they would a standard specification – it’s a nice sweetener.”
Located adjacent to the planned route
“This is the year in which we have made the transition from junior explorer to developing our first mine at Woodlawn,”
of the decline at 120m to 150m below the surface, the G2 lens represented the first underground production source that would be processed through the plant.
“Our decline is currently close to 50m so we are almost halfway there in terms of depth already – it will take us a couple more months of declining to get to that position but it is very shallow,” Mr Taylor said.
“For a former operation to have material that high up is very unusual and we are certainly very thankful that it is there.”
The 14-hole 2411 metre program defined the limits of the G2 area and the results provided Heron with the assurance of the boundaries and structure of the mineralisation.
“The completion of the G2 Lens drilling program is an important step for the early production schedule of the mine in 2019,” he said.
“While structurally complex, the often high-grade nature of the lens should provide a good source of early underground ore to the processing plant; furthermore this mineralisation is in addition to the published reserves for the project.”
New Processing Facility
The company has also started building its new state-of-the-art processing facility.
“We have the opportunity to put in brand new equipment which has benefit from the evolutionary steps that, over time, people have found ways to improve,” he said.
“So it’s more efficient and it’s more effective – the other part is the installation of the IsaMill – it’s a piece of technology that wasn’t around during the previous operations.
“It’s all about fine grinding and that grinding liberates the different minerals so we can separate them more effectively.”
Mr Taylor said the IsaMill was one of the best examples of the advances made in sulphide processing technology since Woodlawn closed down in 1998.
Regional Exploration
Heron has a strategic exploration ground holding within its 1200km tenement package over the prospective Silurian volcanic rocks around the Woodlawn mine.
“Our focus aside from Woodlawn is still somewhat Woodlawn - we want to deliver this project and we don’t want to be distracted by too many other things at this time but we will be undertaking some activity on those regional tenements,” Mr Taylor said.
“There are some very high ranking prospects there that have the potential to deliver a satellite production source for the Woodlawn plant down the track.”
The company’s exploration strategy was on known mineralisation with comparable metallurgy to Woodlawn and within trucking distance of the Woodlawn concentrator.
On The Horizon
“One of the interesting things about the zinc space is we don’t have many pure zinc peers at present and there are still very few that are financed to get into development,” Mr Taylor said.
“So I can’t see our peer group expanding that much - that said amongst the current peers our studies suggest that we will be very competitive on a cost basis and that was and always has been one of the significant draw cards of Woodlawn.
“Its high-grade mineralisation means that we are able to operate at the right end of the global cost curve, so we think we will remain very competitive.”
While it was coming up to an exciting time for the company he said the project would see the realisation of plans that were set many years ago.
“There is quite a bit of internal satisfaction in seeing this all materialise – we see ourselves coming into production at a time when the zinc market is still showing significant signs of strength – we continue to see the stocks drawn.
“Right now our focus remains on the delivery of Woodlawn but beyond that we have our regional exploration program which is all organic growth.”