official start for copperco lady annie

Official start for Lady Annie

Rebecca Lawson
Friday, 19 October 2007

COPPERCO has officially opened the operations at it Lady Annie copper project, the first new base metal mine developed in a decade in north Queensland.



The opening of the mine, a culmination of activities over a three-year period, comes after mining operations started in late June when the company first started extracting ore from the Mount Clarke ore body.

Production at the mine started at a rate of 19,000 tonnes per annum and is expected to be ramped up to 25,000tpa by mid 2008, and 30,000tpa is targeted thereafter.

First shipment of copper cathode to the world's largest commodity trader, Glencore International, began over a week ago and revenue was flagged at around $11 million.

The company has an off-take agreement with Glencore for the life of mine production, which is pegged at around nine years. Lady Annie will produce ore from five main openpit sources.

CopperCo anticipates 1350 tonnes of cathode will be produced, shipped and sold by month-end.

"Today's opening crystallises the emergence of CopperCo as Australia's second largest pure copper producer, vindicating our confidence in the favourable dynamics of the world copper market which has seen demand grow by 3.9 percent a year for the past 10 years," managing director Brian Rear said.

The company has invested more than $100 million in Lady Annie which has a resource of some 33 million tonnes, representing revenue of more than $1 billion.