CuDeco poised to prove its mettle
THE new boss of copper producer CuDeco says the company is ideally positioned to take advantage of strong commodity prices for the red metal.
CuDeco, which moved from the Gold Coast to Brisbane in 2016, has had a troubled year.
Production was halted at its Rocklands facility several times, there have been many management changes, and funding issues have also plagued the company.
Chief executive Gongyang Jiang, who was appointed to the top job last month after earlier serving as chief operating officer, this week claimed CuDeco has turned a corner.
“As the new CEO I am committed to making our best effort, especially when we have a very good opportunity with the copper price,” Mr Jiang told the Bulletin. “We have a strong team on-site and have worked out a lot of financial stress.”
He has cause to be confident with copper climbing above $US7000 last month, helped by shrinking supplies.
However, safety and compliance issues at Rocklands, located near Cloncurry, has hampered production.
Last month the Department of Natural Resources and Mines issued a suspension notice, with production only resuming on Monday after the ban was lifted.
Mr Jiang said it was a procedural breach related to a maintenance issue that went unreported to the department.
“There was a technical breach of the plan and the department said ‘we require you to suspend operations while you address that’,” he said.
“We reviewed our safety management systems and had more training and we emphasised to all our people, employees and contractors, that safety was the number one priority.”
CuDeco said it had also made improvements to the production process. They included an upgraded crusher facility, operating with two cone crushers in series.
A native copper circuit bypass has also been installed, enabling the plant to process primary ore without operating the scrubber, screening, jig and gravity circuits, which will be reserved to process the native copper ore separately.
Mr Jiang said last month concentrate shipments from Rocklands totalled a record 9900 wet metric tonnes.
Production throughput hit a record high monthly rate of 240,000 tonnes, meaning the plant was operating at 96 per cent of capacity.
CuDeco has also announced Adam Norton as the new general manager at Rocklands. Mr Jiang said Mr Norton has had an impeccable safety record during his career, which began in 1989.