Hudbay is moving ahead with attempts to pull valuable minerals out of its Flin Flon tailings facility, hiring an outside company to analyze what can be found inside.
The company has entered a test work agreement with Cobalt Blue Holdings, an Australia-based mining company. The deal will see Cobalt Blue using an in-house, proprietary processing technology on tailings from Flin Flon and determining whether minerals like gold, silver, copper, zinc or cobalt can be produced from concentrate pulled from the tailings.
“Reprocessing mining waste containing pyrite and recovering metals remains a focus for our business,” said Joe Kaderavek, chief executive officer of Cobalt Blue in a statement issued by the company.
“Generally, the opportunities include cobalt-containing pyrite, along with other base and precious metal sulphides such as copper, zinc and gold.”
Cobalt Blue will be paid a fee by Hudbay to pursue the project - Hudbay will send a tailings sample to Cobalt Blue, which is expected to take up to four months for the Aussies to complete tests on.
Hudbay has kept the tailings facility on care and maintenance since it closed the 777 mine last summer, along with much of its Flin Flon-area operations. While the mine is closed, Hudbay has pursued different methods of pulling mineral value from the tailings for years, doing exploratory drilling at the facility last year. The facility contains more than 100 million tonnes of tailings, mostly waste material created during the mining process which can include different amounts of valuable minerals swept away during processing.
Drilling at the site has brought better than expected results, said a Hudbay spokesperson, adding that the deal with Cobalt Blue will see if the project can support further work.
“Hudbay has been considering the potential of the Flin Flon tailings and the results of the confirmatory drilling indicated higher zinc, copper and silver grades than predicted from historical mill records, while confirming the historical gold grade,” said the spokesperson.
“We look forward to working with Cobalt Blue as we seek to process this material and recover as much metal as possible utilizing Cobalt Blue’s proprietary minerals processing technology and delivering further value.”
