The expansion project at the New Jersey mill near Kellogg, Ida. is about 76% completed on a cost basis, New Jersey Mining Co. reported this morning.
All major equipment has been procured and is on site, including a new 2.4-meter-diameter by 4.0-meter-long ball mill, a new cone crusher and a new paste thickener. A new 400-tonne fine-ore bin has been fabricated and erected. An 80×150-foot steel building has been erected over the old mill buildings.
Work remaining includes closing up the building, final assembly of the ball mill, conveyor installation, additions to the flotation circuit, process piping and instrumentation and electrical wiring. It is expected that commissioning will commence in 1Q12, the company said, processing about 3,500 tonnes of stockpiled ore from United Silver Corp.‘s Crescent mine.
The expansion project is on schedule according to the January 2011 announcement and costs are near original budget expectations, New Jersey Mining said.
Back in January, a joint venture was announced with USC to expand and operate the New Jersey mill. USC was to pay all the expansion costs (now estimated to be $2.5 million) of increasing the processing rate from 4 mtph to 15, or about 10,000 mtpm. USC will have a right to 7,000 mtpm and NJMC will have a right to 3,000 mtpm of capacity. NJMC will own 66% of the joint venture and will be the operator and receive a management fee.
“The New Jersey Mill Joint Venture will be beneficial to both NJMC and USC by reducing operating and capital costs for processing ores from both companies,” said Fred Brackebusch, NJMC president. “It is expected that the new expanded plant will process ores at higher than designed rates, based on mill tests and laboratory tests performed early in 2011.”
When the deal was announced in January, Charles Pitcher, CEO of USC (then called United Mining Group), said that “we have already initiated discussions for growing the facility to eventually accommodate the treatment of the Crescent Silver mine’s ultimate annual production target of 4 million ounces of silver.”
