Whilst Hera plant is there as an option to process Federation ore it’s been interesting listening to management comments about potentially not bringing this plant back online and even expanding the Peak plant. All this was to come out in a optimisation study on how they best use their infrastructure in Cobar.
Peak is a two stage crush/float plant that produces seperate concentrates (Pb, Zn, Cu).
Hera is a single stage plant that produces a single bulk concentrate.
The concentrate from Hera naturally gets a lower payability from the smelters as they have to seperate out the metals… if you look back Hera was getting payabilities of ~85% for Pb and ~77% for Zn. This compares to ~95% and ~83% payabilities out of the Peak plant which produces seperate concentrates.
Whilst Hera is far closer to Federation than Peak (10km vs 100km) you have to factor in lower recoveries/payabilities and also having to man two seperate processing plants.
Let’s see the results of this optimisation study. My view is if AMI and MAC were to merge - you’d send all the copper ores up to CSA to process and all the Pb/Zn ores to Peak to process. This maximises recoveries/payabilities and fully utilises both site’s infrastructure… without having to campaign mill the two seperate ore types through Peak which wouldn’t be efficient.
AMI Price at posting:
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