OZ Minerals is a world-class mining business who owns and operates Prominent Hill, a high quality copper-gold mine in South Australia. They are Australia’s third largest copper producer, with quality assets, a healthy cash balance and no debt.
Background
OZ Mineral’s Prominent Hill underground copper-gold mine is relatively new, with copper concentrate production beginning in 2009. Prominent Hill produces one of the highest grades of copper concentrate traded on the open market. There are three mines now in production at Prominent Hill (Ankata underground, Malu open pit and Malu underground).
OZ Minerals is renowned for delivering consistent quality performances, with for example, key financial commit-ments achieved or exceeded in 2015 (130,305t of copper and 113,028 oz of gold produced). This success is due to its management team and their strong working relationship with world class operations contractors.
Malu underground mine backfill
The Malu mine is in a large sub-vertical sulphide copper orebody. Mining is carried out using long-hole stoping with mine backfill to achieve 100% ore extraction. The stoping sequence involves mining to the side of and under very large backfill masses, requiring high volumes of high strength fill. As with many mines, backfill reliability and quality is critical to the success of the Malu underground mine.
In 2013 Outotec was requested to help optimise Ankata’s functionality by providing operational expertise and infrastructure upgrades to this paste backfill operation.