OZ Minerals Limited owns 100% of the Prominent Hill copper-gold project located in South Australia. Commissioning of the new copper-gold mine occurred in February 2009 with first sales of Prominent Hill concentrate occuring in April 2009.
The Prominent Hill copper-gold deposit was discovered in 2001 by Adelaide based Minotaur Exploration Limited and has been the stand-out green fields discovery of the decade in Australia.
In 2003, Oxiana entered a staged-earn in with Minotaur. Prominent Hill is located 650km north-west of Adelaide and 130km south-east of the town of Coober Pedy in South Australia. On 25 August 2006 Oxiana's Board of Directors formally approved development of the Prominent Hill copper-gold mine.
Ongoing exploration of the deposit and completion of a scoping study continued to indicate the high quality of the deposit, and OZ Minerals Limited moved to 100% ownership in early 2005 through acquiring Minotaur and spinning off the non-Prominent Hill assets into new company Minotaur Exploration Limited (MEP).
Prominent Hill operation summary
The Prominent Hill operation is comprised of an open pit mine, a conventional grinding and flotation processing plant with an 8mtpa capacity, a permanent village and a haulage road, power line and bore field.
Prominent Hill concentrates travel directly to customers including smelters in Asia and Europe via the Adelaide to Darwin railway (which passes within 116km of the Prominent Hill mine) to the deep, uncongested Port of Darwin and then via ship to the waiting smelters – all in about 12 days. Concentrates are also transported by road to local customers.
Production
First production of Prominent Hill copper concentrates occured in February 2009. (See announcement: First production from Prominent Hill copper-gold operation ).
In 2009 OZ Minerals produced 96,310 tonnes of copper, 75,535 ounces of gold and 700,177 ounces of silver. Production for 2010 is planned to be 100,000 tonnes to 110,000 tonnes of copper and 140,000 ounces to 150,000 ounces of gold contained in concentrates.
Exploration
OZ Minerals is exploring around the Prominent Hill area for further copper-gold deposits and exploration testing so far has returned some excellent results.
OZ Minerals has access to a large and highly prospective 7,000 kilometre square tenement package in which to explore and drilling potential Prominent Hill-style targets is now underway.
The Prominent Hill underground project feasibility study confirmed the technical and economic viability of mining the Western Copper deposit. The project has now been approved and development will proceed immediately. Construction of the permanent haul road to access the portal is underway. Ventilation shaft construction will start in August..
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