Tungsten West Ltd will spend £30-40 million on reopening Drakelands / Hemerdon mine in Devon to become one of the biggest producers of tungsten concentrate outside China.
The company is currently progressing with feasibility studies on tin-tungsten in the mine, also known as Hemerdon Mine, which is said to have the fourth largest reserves of tungsten in the world.
COSTS
Tungsten West bought the mine for nearly £9 million in November 2019 after the previous owners Wolf Minerals collapsed.
The Australian company had spent over £200 million on the site but the new owner’s initial modifications will cost a fraction of that amount.
Future investment will meet the costs of rebuilding the site and modifications, as well as working capital.
The feasibility studies are due to be completed this year or by Q1 of 2021, after which Tungsten West hopes to receive finance and complete rebuilding the site in six months.
SCRUTINY
Chief executive Max Denning told Argus Media: “We have one of the lowest production costs for medium-grade ore, so strategically, we are in a very strong position at the lower end of the cost curve.
“Tungsten concentrate buyers need security of supply. And outside China, concentrates are a rare commodity.
“China also has a concentrate export ban, and as there are few producers of tungsten concentrates in the rest of the world, there is a gap to fill.
“Tungsten West is in talks with a multitude of potential buyers on off-take agreements.
“We’ll be one of the biggest producers of tungsten concentrate outside China at a time when there may be a certain level of increased scrutiny over supply chains.
“Also, we’re in discussions with local renewable power projects over powering the site with green energy.
“Great advances are being made in green mining equipment and this is something that we’re looking to deploy in a few years.”
TECHNOLOGY
During the tests, Tungsten West found they were unable to use the historical data because the old processing plant failed to consider certain nuances of the ore — most notably the friable nature of the mineral — and therefore had insufficient recovery rates in its three years of operations.
The plant also suffered from a lack of stability and surge capacity, which caused excessive downtime.
After six months’ investigation, the company found that the mineral was ferberite [the iron end member of iron-manganese wolframite] and not wolframite.
Tungsten West began a new process using X-ray transmission ore sorting (XRT), a pre-concentration technology that scans each individual rock for density and removes barren material.
The ore body is in nugget form and contains coarse grain ferberite crystals, which makes it optimal for ore sorting.
The additional ore sorting step reduces downstream processing costs, and feed into the concentrator plant, leading to a much cleaner and higher-grade ore.
Tungsten West also aims to introduce wet-high intensity magnetic separation initially alongside the existing fines gravity circuit, as ferberite is para-magnetic, meaning it concentrates via magnetic separation. (Based on a Q&A on Argus Media)