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Wallbridge's Broken Hammer mine generates US$4.7 million smelter revenue to date

By admin

Sep 24, 2014

Wallbridge Mining Company Limited (TSX: WM) ("Wallbridge") announced that its Broken Hammer mine, an open pit copper and platinum group metals (PGM) mine located in Sudbury, Ontario generated US$4.7 million smelter revenue since it began operations in June, 2014.

Wallbridge calculated its net smelter revenue  using a combination of current metal prices and hedged prices.

Mining at the Broken Hammer open pit operation has achieved the targeted production rate of 800 tonnes per day. Approximately 44,000 tonnes of ore has been produced to date and shipped to the Redstone mill in Timmins, Ontario operated by Northern Sun Mining Corporation (TSX-V: NSM) ('Northern Sun').

"As is typical with every start-up project, we faced some challenges in the first couple of months with achieving mining rates due to unusually wet weather and with milling due to lower than expected platinum and gold recoveries," stated Marz Kord, President and CEO of Wallbridge.

 "Our copper and palladium recoveries are now better than expected and the platinum and gold recoveries are closer to the expected range. The project production rate is now on budget and additional modifications are being implemented to further improve platinum and gold recoveries," Kord added.

Broken Hammer Mine Description

The Broken Hammer project was discovered by Wallbridge's exploration team, with the first identification of mineralization in 2003. Wallbridge commenced construction in March of this year and has advanced the project into an open pit operation.

 An in-pit Cu-PGM-Ni mineable reserve of approximately 193,000 tonnes will be mined utilizing the services of William Day Construction Limited, a local mining contractor. Mining is expected to be maintained at an average of approximately 800 tonnes of ore per day. 

The ore is being transported to Northern Sun's Redstone facility in Timmins, Ontario where two types of concentrates are produced namely a gravity concentrate (a high grade platinum, palladium, and gold concentrate) and a copper concentrate. The gravity concentrate will be sold to a PGM smelter in Europe and the copper concentrate will be sold to a nearby copper smelter.

Summary of the Broken Hammer Updated Mineral Reserve Estimate

Wallbridge has prepared an updated in-pit mineral reserve estimate incorporating results from initial mining, the 2011 bulk sample at the Broken Hammer Project as well as mining, milling, smelting and refining contracts.  This in-pit mineral reserve update builds upon previous NI 43-101 reports, including the independent prefeasibility report prepared by Genivar Inc. ("GENIVAR") entitled "Prefeasibility Report on the Broken Hammer Project, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada" according to CIM Standards that was filed on November 29, 2012 (refer to November 29, 2012 press release).

A global mining recovery of 95% and 5% dilution (at zero grade) was used in the calculation. Table 1 below summarizes the in-pit reserve estimate.

Table 1: Mineral Reserve estimate, with an effective date of June 24, 2014

Category

Tonnes

Copper %

 Nickel %

Gold
(gpt)

 Silver
 (gpt)

 Platinum
(gpt)

Palladium
(gpt)

 
 

Probable

193,152

    0.95  

  0.1

0.65

 6.69

 2.16

1.96

 

Waste Rock

1,621,683

             

Stripping Ratio

 8.4