Big Hill To Supply A Third Of Vietnam Plant Feedstock

Western Australian’s Big Hill tungsten deposit may be in a position to supply a third of Hazelwood Resources’ requirements for a new ferrotungsten plant in Vietnam, an integrated prefeasibility study has shown.


Last month Hazelwood took a 60 per cent stake in the plant.

In the first phase the plant would have a capacity of 2.4-million kilograms of contained tungsten, in the form of 80% grade ferrotungsten, and would rely on feedstock from external sources. The first stage will be ready by the end of this year and the plant is scheduled to commence production early next year.
Stage two will double capacity to 4.8-million kilograms of contained tungsten and Big Hill is slated to provide around a third of the feedstock.


“The ferrotungsten business in Vietnam requires a long-term supply of high-purity feedstock and the development of Big Hill will allow us to increase the scale and quality of production,” said Hazelwood MD Terry Butler-Blaxell.



“We are currently conducting extensive pilot test work trials for process optimisation and product certification,” he added.


A definitive feasibility study of the Big Hill deposit will be completed by the second half of this year.


The Vietnam plant will be the largest producer of ferrotungsten outside China, capable of 25 per cent of global demand for the product.

Hazelwood Announces Increase In Big Hill Tungsten Resource

Australian miner, Hazelwood Resources, which is completing feasibility studies on its Big Hill Tungsten Deposit in Western Australia’s Pilbara region, has announced an interim upgrade to the JORC Resource. Results show an increase in higher category resources of 72%. Further resource upgrades are expected as drilling continues.

Production at Big Hill is due to start in 2011 and will produce around 3% of the world’s supply of primary mined tungsten.

Hazelwood announced earlier this week its acquisition of a majority stake in a ferrotungsten project in Vietnam that is expected to be commissioned later this year.

“The Big Hill deposit is mostly near the surface and needs almost no stripping to get the mine started. The metallurgy is proven through extensive testwork and we are currently doing significant pilot scale testing," said Hazelwood Managing Director Terry Butler-Blaxell.

"We can bulk mine and process at low cut-off grades and therefore mine more of the deposit,” he added.

Hazelwood Buys 60 Per Cent Stake In Ferrotungsten Project

Australian miner, Hazelwood Resources, has acquired a 60% interest in a new ferrotungsten plant in Vietnam as part of its vertical integration strategy. The plant is expected to be commissioned towards the end of this year and will be located near the port of Haiphong in northern Vietnam.

Hazelwood will pay $825,000 to acquire 60% of the share capital of Hong Kong Based Asia Tungsten Products Company Ltd and will contribute 60% of the capex and provide working capital as a loan. Capex for the first stage the project is approximately $US16.3m.

The plant will have the capability of providing 25% of the world’s ferrotungsten and will be able to operate on feedstock from multiple sources, including concentrate from Hazelwood’s Big Hill Tungsten Project in Western Australia.

At full capacity projected annual turnovers are $US150m at the current ferrotungsten price of $US31.50/kg. Profit after tax for ATC HK is projected at $US32m per annum from 2012. The project is anticipated to be cashflow positive late 2011/early 2012.

Peru's Gold Output Up, Silver Down

Peru's Energy and Mines Ministry has reported that the country’s gold production for February was 522,373 ounces, compared to 495,337 ounces in February 2008 – rise of 5.5%.

The increase was attributed to higher output at the Minera Barrick Misquichilca mine, as well as at mines owned by Compañia Minera San Simon, Companña Minera Podersoa, Minera Suyamarca and Minera Laytaruma.

Peru also mined 9,596,228 ounces of silver last month, an 11% decrease compared to February 2009’s 10,819,793 ounces of silver were produced.

Meanwhile lead production declined by 11% over the past year, tungsten dropped by 2% and molybdenum rose 13% during the same period.

China Halts Rare Earth Mining Applications

China has stopped accepting applications for new mines to produce rare earth minerals until June 30, 2011, the country’s land ministry announced on Monday.

The policy is aimed at protecting resources and will help producers in price talks.
China plans to cap 2010 output of tungsten metal at 80,000 tons, antimony at 100,000 tons and rare earth at 89,200 tons, the land ministry said in a statement. It has also set targets for provinces and companies.

“The policy is aimed at protecting and effectively utilize China’s advantageous mineral resources,” the ministry said.

Hazelwood Resources Starts Pilot Tests At Big Hill Tungsten Deposit

Australian tungsten producer Hazelwood Resources has started pilot milling tests on bulk samples from the Big Hill Tungsten Deposit in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.

Approximately 30 tonnes of excavated material and 40 tonnes of large diameter metallurgical core have been collected to provide feed for pilot scale processing test work for the definitive feasibility study.

Hazelwood is focused on becoming Australia’s only Tungsten producer with 2-3% of world production commencing in 2010.

The company’s iron ore and nickel projects are located in the same Cookes Creek region in the eastern Pilbara and offer significant potential for the delineation of resources in the near future.

Property Lifts Xiamen Tungsten Profits 40 Per Cent

Xiamen Tungsten Co, Ltd, China's largest producer and exporter of tungsten and molybdenum products, said on Wednesday that net profits increased 40.49 percent to 467 million yuan ($68 million) last year.

In unaudited financial statements filed with the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the company said that it expects the earnings-per-share to be 0.31 yuan, up 7.43 percent year on year.

The company attributed the profit to increased revenues made at its property subsidiary.

Wolf Talks Up UK Tungsten, Tin Development

Wolf Minerals is doing the rounds on the east coast, talking up interest in its Hemerdon tungsten and tin project.

Hemerdon will be the first sizeable new metals mine in Britain (Devon to be precise) in more than a decade.

After hanging on through the global financial crisis, Wolf recently raised $4 million to get through a feasibility study, which it hopes to have done in the second quarter of next year -- a year later than proscribed in its pre-GFC timetable.

According to managing director Humphrey Hale (a Brit himself), Hemerdon has an NPV of $US237m, which makes Wolf’s $14m market value look a little low if you buy the story of the mine and continued tungsten demand.

With China controlling 80 per cent of global tungsten production, Wolf is expecting European companies like Stanvik and H.C. Starck to want to tie up demand from the British mine.

Perth-based Wolf is looking to finance the L64m ($11.7m) start-up cost through a mixture of debt and equity and is chasing some lift in the share price to help it get some better terms for whatever amount of equity financing it settles on.

Hemerdon has fairly moderate grades, but a low strip ratio of 1.46:1, which Wolf says should keep a lid on costs.

Source: The Australian

Ormonde Makes Progress In Spain

Ormonde Mining, the AIM and IEX listed mining outfit with operations in Spain, today said it had put “significant effort” into progressing its two main projects during the first half of the year.

Work on the Barruecopardo tungsten project saw a doubling of the projected annual production to 400,000 tons following further appraisal work on the asset.

The currently defined JORC Inferred Resource at Barruecopardo is 5.2 million tons at an average grade of 0.48% tungsten trioxide. The company noted that with this size and grade of resource, Barruecopardo was already a major western world tungsten deposit. It is currently looking for a funding partner to help develop the project.

At the La Zarza copper-gold project Ormonde had better luck in attracting a partner after agreeing a deal with a mining major to inject US$7 million over a three year period via a joint venture to earn a 51% interest in the project.

Source: Small Cap News

Newcrest Mine Capable Of 4800tpa Tungsten

Australia's Newcrest Mining Ltd. said on Friday that the O'Callaghans tungsten mine, near its Telfer gold mine, would be capable of annual production 4,800 metric tons of tungsten.

Newcrest, Australia's largest gold miner, is conducting a feasibility study and will decide in the next 12 months whether to develop the resource.

Once developed, O'Callaghans would be twice as large as any other tungsten mine in the world, producing about 7% of global output, Newcrest said in a presentation.

Source: Trading Markets

Vietnam To Revoke Tiberon Tungsten Licence

Vietnam will probably revoke the license for a Tiberon Minerals Ltd. mining project, which may hold one of the world’s largest tungsten deposits outside China, because of delays, the government said on Tuesday.

Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has instructed the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and the government in the northern Thai Nguyen province, where the mine is located, to examine the US$147 million Nuiphaovica project and “terminate its investment and mining licenses if any violations are found,” according to a statement on the cabinet’s website.

“We haven’t received any official announcement from the Vietnamese government and so we have no comment for now,” Phan Minh Tuan, a director at Ho Chi Minh City-based Dragon Capital Group, which runs a fund that bought Tiberon in 2007, said by telephone from Hanoi Tuesday.

Tuan, who is also the chairman of the Nuiphaovica venture that developed the mine, estimates the total cost of the project at $400 million.

Tungsten, used in light-bulb filaments and to strengthen steel, may advance to near a record in 2013 as China, the world’s biggest producer, is expected to restrict exports to conserve domestic supplies as the country’s market faces a deficit, the CRU Group said last week.


Chinese demand will climb 8.1 percent a year from 2009 to 2013, outpacing a 2.7 percent average annual gain in domestic mine production, the London-based commodity research and advisory group said.

Spot prices of the metal have declined 33 percent since reaching a peak of $295 a metric ton unit, or 10 kilograms, in 2005. The spot price in Europe was $197.50 on August 28. Markets were closed Monday.

Toronto-based Tiberon, which got permission to start developing the Vietnam mine in 2004, in October asked the local government to delay starting production until 2010 because of the global financial crisis, Vietnam Investment Review newspaper reported Monday. Tiberon has a 70 percent stake in the mine.

“We informally told Tiberon last week about the possibility of terminating the project and withdrawing its license,” Nguyen Duc Minh, head of Thai Nguyen province’s Department for Planning and Investment said by telephone Tuesday. “There’s no clear plan yet as to how the project will continue, however the prime minister may want to give it to a big state- owned company,” he said.

Tiberon in September 2006 said it planned to start production this year. The mine was expected to yield 4,788 metric tons of tungsten, 222,458 tons of fluorspar and 2,038 tons of bismuth a year, according to the company.

Source: Thanh Nien

Newcrest Tungsten Discovery Is "World Class Find"

NEWCREST has put the wind up China's tungsten industry by revealing that its O'Callaghans tungsten discovery near the Telfer gold/copper mine in Western Australia is shaping up as a world-class find.

Managing director of Melbourne-based Newcrest Ian Smith said an initial resource estimate for O'Callaghans would be about 60 million tonnes. He did not give an indicative grade but said it was a deposit of "world significance".

China controls the world tungsten market through production dominance from mines in Jiangxi, Hunan and Yunnan. It may bid for O'Callaghans to maintain its hold.

Newcrest is open to exploiting the situation. Mr Smith said Newcrest had a team in China talking to "people who are very interested in O'Callaghans because China's companies control the tungsten market at the moment".

"But just as importantly, some of the companies to have shown intense interest have been from Japan and northern Europe," Mr Smith said.

While relishing the interest in the strategic discovery, Newcrest has yet to decide whether to hold on to O'Callaghans. "What we're confident of is that we're sitting on a pretty important and strategic resource. There is no shortage of people interested in what is … a world-class deposit outside of the control of the country that now dominates that whole industry," Mr Smith said.

He was speaking at the release of Newcrest's June-quarter/June-year production report. Gold production rose 9 per cent to 397,826 ounces in the June quarter compared with the preceding quarter. That took annual output to 1.63 million ounces for the June year, in line with previous company guidance that output would be 1.62 million ounces. Annual copper production was higher than guidance at 89,900 tonnes.

Newcrest shares closed down 57¢ at $30.39, in line with general share price weakness in the sector due to easing inflation concerns that have sent gold prices lower.

Source: The Age

North American Tunsgten To Mothball Yukon Mine

North American Tungsten Corp. will temporarily close down its Cantung mine near the N.W.T.-Yukon border in October, the company announced on Monday.

In a release, president Stephen Leahy cited declining tungsten prices and increasing stockpiles of ore for the company's decision to suspend operations at the mine effective Oct. 15.

The mine will then be put on a "care and maintenance program," with the hopes that it can be brought back into production when market conditions improve, Leahy said.

"This has been a difficult decision as we have seen our tungsten team evolve to be among the best in the world," Leahy stated in Monday's release.

"I expect that a tungsten supply shortfall will develop as the world economy improves. We fully intend to pursue plans to return the mine to full operations after markets have significantly firmed."

Leahy said the company will now focus on exploring at its Mactung deposit this summer, although it says it will conduct exploration drilling at Cantung as well.

The Cantung mine is located in the western Northwest Territories, just east of the Yukon border. It is accessible by a 300-kilometre all-weather road from Watson Lake, Yukon.

Almost every business in the town will be affected by the mine's shutdown, said Norm Griffiths, president of the Watson Lake Chamber of Commerce.

"The grocery store does supply. There [are] supplies that come from just about all of the business aspects," Griffiths told CBC News on Monday.

"There is also many of the other stores who would be selling anything from bug dope to rain gear or any of the industrial-type clothing required. So yeah, it affects everybody all across the whole spectrum."

The Cantung mine has gone through several owners since prospectors discovered a tungsten deposit there in 1954. North American Tungsten reopened the mine in December 2001, according to the company's website.

Work was suspended two years later, when North American Tungsten was placed under creditor protection, but production resumed in 2005.

Source: CBC

Lermontev Tungsten Licence To Be Issued Soon

The issue of the return of the ore extraction license to the Lermontov tungsten deposit in the Primorsky Territory will be considered in the coming days. This will make it possible to resume production at the Mining and Processing Combine in the Svetlogorye settlement, Russian president’s plenipotentiary representative in the Far Eastern federal district Viktor Ishayev said on Wednesday after a meeting he held in the settlement with representatives of the owner of the enterprise, Primorsky Territory administration and trade union.

“On Friday, after our appeal to the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Federal Subsoil Use Agency (Rosnedra) will consider the issue of the return of the license to the owner,” he promised. “The owner has assumed obligations and is preparing a project so that the enterprise could resume operation, but with the secondary resources, because the cost of product in this case will be lower. Consequently, it will be possible to lower the price and at the same time get profit and enter the market with this product,” the RF president’s plenipotentiary representative noted.

According to an agreement signed on Wednesday on the results of the meeting in Svetlogorye, from July 17 the property of the Russky Volfram (Russian Wolfram) company is transferred on lease to the territorial enterprise Primteploenergo for a term of 5 years. The sides assume the obligations to conclude before June 19 a contractor’s agreement on the works linked with the exploitation of the Lermontov tungsten deposit, and from July 1 this year the former workers of the Russky Volfram branch are to begin their work in the new structure. Before July 1, 2009 the sides are to work out a plan of measures for the preparation of documentation for the resumption of extraction and processing of ore. The signed agreement also envisages a number of measures aimed at ensuring employment of the Svetlogorye population. Three wood processing enterprises and a branch of the Primavtodor company will soon start work in the settlement.

Ishayev stressed that “it is impossible to settle everything in one day.” “The territorial administration has assume the obligation to immediately settle emerging social issues, and the office of the president’ s plenipotentiary representative will control the fulfilment of these obligations,” said the official adding that Russky Volfram is not the most complicated enterprise of the Primorsky Territory and the Far Eastern federal district.

He also noted that the “administration of the Primorsky Territory assumed the obligation to create additional jobs in the shortest possible time. The work is already being carried out. Several dozen additional jobs will be created at local enterprises of the forestry industry. It is planned to develop wood processing in Svetlogorye,” the presidential plenipotentiary representative noted.

“The resumption of production at Russky Volfram, employment of those who lost jobs at the enterprise will finally make it possible to ease the social tension in the settlement,” the official said. “We will provide support to the territorial administration in the settlement of social problems of Svetlogorye,” Ishayev emphasised.

The owner of the Primorsky Territory's branch of the Russky Volfram enterprise has leased it for a term of five years to the Primteploenergo regional utility company.

Itar-Tass was told at the press centre of the administration of the Primorsky Territory on Tuesday that according to the document, the owner of the plant – the Russky Volfram tungsten company leases to Primteploenergo for 5 years the enterprise’s key assets ensuring the production process.

The administration said that the rent will be “symbolical,” but did not disclose the sum of the deal. “A special commission in the Svetlogorye settlement is currently engaged in stock taking of the enterprise’s property,” said the press centre.

According to the head of the trade union committee of the Svetlogorye enterprise, Leonid Otnyakin, the workers of the enterprise have “approved the decision on the transfer of the enterprise to a state-run structure for management.” “The people who are tired of the lack of money, criminal omission and inefficient work of the owners of the enterprise, now have got confidence in the future,” he said.

Source: Itar-Tass

New Owners At Russian Tungsten

The Primorye region on Sunday brokered the handover of miner Russian Tungsten to new owners following a year of protests over wage arrears at the company and a Kremlin warning that Far East political leaders should resolve the dispute.

The company will cede control of production sites and allow an as-yet undetermined state firm to operate them for five years, according to an agreement signed by Governor Sergei Darkin, a representative of Russian Tungsten, and a representative of the workers. Miners will start work again on July 1, following an eight-month stoppage.

The government has made fighting unpaid wages a priority after residents of the Leningrad region town Pikalyovo blocked a federal road earlier this month to protest unpaid salaries. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited several days later to berate the owners of the town’s three factories, including billionaire Oleg Deripaska, and lawmakers are considering a bill to nationalize the plants.

With about 240 workers, Russian Tungsten is the largest employer in the town of Svetlogorye. Most of the plant’s workers had not been paid since this winter, and earlier this month they received letters about their forthcoming dismissal.

Following in the footsteps of the Pikalyovo residents, Russian Tungsten employees sent a letter to Putin last week. “Do we need to block a federal highway to receive our salaries? We won’t survive another hungry winter,” the letter said, according to Interfax.

And while Pikalyovo residents could turn their ire toward their high-profile employers, the situation around Russian Tungsten has been less clear.

Previous manager Alexander Martynov sold the miner to Seychelles-registered Granit Capital Management, regional newspapers reported last week. An unidentified representative for the owner of Russian Tungsten signed the agreement Sunday.

Medvedev mentioned Russian Tungsten in a video conference with his federal envoys on Wednesday, saying he was concerned by what he had read online about the factory. He ordered his envoy to the Far East, Viktor Ishayev, to “see these issues to their resolution.”

The following day, the regional administration said the workers were paid the 6.3 million ruble ($203,400) debt by an unidentified commercial bank, which issued the sum on Darkin’s guarantee.

The regional branch of ruling party United Russia will oversee efforts to restart mining operations together with the trade union, Sunday’s statement said.

Darkin also promised to open three timber processing sites in Svetlogorye, employ locals for road reconstruction and lower their electricity prices.

Social tensions in the town boiled over last June, when dozens of Russian Tungsten workers went on a hunger strike over unpaid wages. In April, most of Svetlogorye’s 1,600 residents turned out for protests over the situation, telling the media that they only survived last winter by eating potato peels.

Source: St Petersburg Times

Oromonde Mining Upbeat On Outlook For Tungsten

Irish-based mineral exploration company Ormonde Mining has reported pre-tax losses of €2.5m for the year to December 2008 compared to losses of €580,00 the previous year.

The company said this was due mainly to a write-down of early exploration work on the Salamon and Trives projects.

Ormonde said that an increase in the total resource led it to double its proposed production rate to 400,000 tonnes a year.

It said its Barruecopardo Tungsten project at Salamanca in Spain is positioning itself to become a major, low-capital, long-life tungsten operation at a time when structural changes and integration within the industry continue in anticipation of future tungsten shortages.

Tungsten has a hardness close to diamonds. It is mainly used in the manufacture of cutting steels and in tungsten alloys, electronics, and chemical products

Chairman Mike Donoghue said that the company - in line with many firms - has been curtailing discretionary development and administrative expenditures, and adopting a very conservative approach to budgeting.

He said that credit crisis and overall fall in demand has impacted adversely in metal prices and stock market valuations.

'However, it would appear that we may have reached the trough of the downturn and a sustainable recovery of the stock market is predicted in anticipation of a broader, if low, economic recovery in 2010/2011,' he stated.

He said that within the mining industry, there is general acceptance that the metal commodity shortages have not been rectified during the last five years and stronger metal prices are deemed inevitable when the world economy recovers.

Source: RTE

Hazelwood Raises $3m To Complete Big Hill Feasibility Study

Hazelwood Resources Ltd has raised $3 million to enable the Company to complete its pre-feasibility study for its 100% owned Big Hill Tungsten Project at Cookes Creek.

Hazelwood Executive Chairman Mark McAuliffe said “We are delighted to have secured significant funds to complete the prefeasibility study of the Big Hill Tungsten Project. Completion of the study is scheduled for September 2009 and will culminate in an economic evaluation of our proposal to produce 220,000 mtu of tungsten trioxide (WO3) commencing in late 2010".

"We expect the Big Hill Tungsten Project to produce around 3% of the world’s supply of tungsten".

The Placement in Hazelwood will be completed in two tranches. The allotment of up to 5 million tranche 1 shares falls within the Company’s ASX Listing Rule 7.1 15% placement capacity, and will be issued in approximately 10 days of this announcement.

The allotment of up to 20 million tranche 2 shares will be issued subject to shareholder approval at a meeting of shareholders to be held on or around 24 June 2009.

Source: ProActive Investors

Big Hill Tungsten Deposit Larger Than Expected

Hazelwood Resources Ltd says it is aiming to produce two to three per cent of the world's tungsten at its Big Hill project.

In a statement to the stock exchange on Monday, Hazelwood said the initial resource at Big Hill, in Western Australia's Pilbara region, was much larger than expected.

If the mine proceeds as hoped the company estimates it will take 220,000 metric tonne units (mtu) of tungsten concentrate annually, with production commencing at the end of 2010.

Tungsten concentrate is currently selling for about $US135 per mtu.

Source: Brisbane Times

China's Tungsten Prices Down Over 30% In Q1

China's tungsten concentrate price has fallen steadily since Q4 in 2008 and by Q1 of this year the average offer of domestic tungsten concentrate had remained at CNY 60,200 to 61,900 per tonne, a fall of 32.81% year-on-year.

The price of APT and ferrotungsten have pointed to the same trend. In Q1 of 2009, the average price of APT remained at CNY 95,000 to 96,900 per tonne down 32% year-on-year and domestic ferrotungsten stayed at CNY 122,100 to 124,500 per tonne down 24.21% year-on-year.

Source: Steel Guru

Hazelwood Claims Big Hill Tungsten Deposit Is Australia's Largest

Hazelwood Resources is claiming its Big Hill tungsten deposit in the Pilbara is the largest measured source of the metal in Australia.

Increasing its forecasts, Hazelwood said the deposit held a total mineral resource of 8.97 million tonnes, representing 1.6 million metric tonne units of tungsten at cut-off grade, or 2.5 million metric tonne units at a lower grade.

The forecasts are a jump from earlier estimates, which put the total resource at five million mtu and and 800,000 mtu of cut-off grade tungsten.

“We are absolutely delighted with the resource,” Hazelwood executive chairman Mark McAuliffe said in a statement.

“This certainly makes us the largest measured resource of tungsten in Australia,” he said, although larger sources were indicated in other areas.

He said the company was completing a preliminary feasibility study, which should be finalised by October this year.

First production likely in the second half of 2010 or early 2011, Mr McAuliffe said.

The Big Hill deposit has 70 per cent of its resource within 100 metres of the surface, the company said.

Source: The West Australian