Australian miner NQ Minerals plans to further improve mining production at its Hellyer mine in Tasmania, Australia by 100,000mt to 1.5mn mt per year during Q1 2021.
The company has started building a second tailings dam at the mine, to be called TSF2, to increase capacity for the rest of the mine’s life and restart underground mining. The company has invested about A$16mn ($12.4mn) in construction.
During the full year 2020, Hellyer produced 38,319mt of lead concentrate, up by 53pc over 24,980mt in 2019. Zinc concentrate output also grew by 22pc in 2020 to 19,019mt, compared with 15,646mt in the prior year.
In Q4 2020, NQ’s lead concentrate output declined on a quarterly basis to 9,565mt against 11,865mt in Q3. Zinc concentrate production rose in Q4 to 5,583mt, compared with 4,585mt in Q3.