News: Black Oak Minerals starts mining at New South Wales silver project

Black Oak Minerals (ASX:BOK) has started mining at its recently acquired Manuka Silver Project in New South Wales with production expected to start in the coming weeks.

The company, formerly known as Southern Cross Goldfields, acquired the project from the liquidators of Cobar Consolidated Resources for $375,000.

This included the Manuka process plant and infrastructure built at a cost of more than $60 million with a production capacity of more than 2 million ounces per year, a 60 million ounce of silver JORC Resource and about 840 square kilometres of exploration territory in the Cobar Basin.

Adding to the interest, the plant provides processing capability for ore from the company’s Mt Boppy Gold Mine about 100 kilometres to the northeast.

Upgrade of the plant, involving installation of a large 1,500 kilowatt ball mill to remove grinding and recovery bottlenecks that hampered previous production has gone smoothly.

This has enabled several process and productivity improvements that had been earmarked for post commissioning to be brought forward.

This includes converting the plant from Carbon‐In‐ Pulp (CIP) to Carbon‐In‐Leach (CIL) to improve silver recovery.

Black Oak expects to continue mining at Manuka for six months before it starts mining at Mt Boppy.