Balcooma

The previous owners of the Balcooma Mine, Kagara Limited, were forced into administration in 2012 which resulted in the mine being sold to Chinese mining company Snow Peak Mining Pty Ltd on January 25, 2013. Snow Peak Mining purchased the mine in association with Consolidated Tin Mines. The purchase included the Maitland and Einasleigh exploration projects as well as the Baal Gammon and Balcooma mines and the Mt Garnett processing plant and resources. The purchase of the Balcooma Mine and its associated assets by Snow Peak Mining and Consolidated Tin has given some former employees of Kagara the opportunity of salvaging their careers in the mining industry.

Balcooma Mine has Been an Open pit and Underground Operation

The Balcooma copper, zinc, lead and silver mine in the Central Region of North Queensland, 180 kilometres inland from Townsville, has been operated as both an open pit and underground operation. It had been the lifeblood of the Kagara operation, particularly the underground mine that was providing most of the ore being processed at the company's Mt Garnet copper treatment plant. The mine included tenements covering 490 square kilometres and was within easy trucking distance of the Mt Garnet processing plant.

Two Individual Copper Resources

There are two quite separate copper resources at the Balcooma Mine, the upper lens and the main copper resource. The latter has a total measured, indicated and inferred resource of 770,000 tonnes grading at 3.4 percent copper. The upper lens has similar resource at a grade of 1.3 percent copper. In 2011, the last year of operation before going into administration, the underground mine produced 461,007 tonnes of copper ore which graded at 3.8 percent copper as well as 52,988 tonnes of polymetallic ore grading at 0.7 percent copper, 3.0 percent lead and 6.2 percent zinc. This production level was higher that that expected and it went a long way to make up for the delay in commencement of mining operations at the company's Baal Gammon mine.

Exporatory drilling at Balcooma North has proven a resource of up to 0.25 million tonnes of ore grading up to three percent copper. Underground drilling is expected to bring this up to reserve status. For this reason an exploration decline has been started with the job of assessing the general characteristics of the deposit as well as allowing for further exploration drilling.

Open pit Mine Closed in 2009

Lachlan resources owned the Balcooma Mine and its tenements in 1991 and sold it to Kagara in 2001. Kagara began the open cut mine in 2005 and closed it in 2009 leaving the 300 metre deep underground mine the only operational mine on the site.

Equipment at the Balcooma Underground Mine

The Balcooma underground operation equipment consisted of:

ï Three twin boom jumbos

ï One LM75 diamond drill rig (operated by contractor Eagle DrillingrnNQ)

ï Two longhole production drill rigs (operated by contractors UME)

ï One CAT and two Volvo underground haulage trucks

ï Three loaders, one 2900 and two 1700's

ï Three twin boom jumbos.

The mine is operated using the longhole stoping method with room/pillar extraction. The mined out stopes are backfilled with cemented aggregate that is produced onsite, alongside rock fill.