Dry river south

Hong Kong listed investment company Snow Peak Mining Pty Ltd has completed the purchase of the troubled Kagara Limited's North Queensland mining tenements that includes the Dry River South copper mine that remains on care and maintenance while its future is evaluated by its new owners.

Dry River South Mine Placed on Care and Maintenance

The Dry River South underground mine just over 100 kilometres south west of Cairns, near the town of Greenvale, came online in 2004 and at its peak employed 280 people who were flown in and flown out from Townsville and Cairns to complete their rostered shifts of eight days on and six days off. Although the mine produced zinc, silver, lead and gold, copper was its mainstay, especially after Kagara developed an adjacent copper mine, Balcooma. However, in the latter half of 2008, both the Dry River South and the Balcooma mines were suspended. Mining commenced again in early 2009 but were placed on care and maintenance near the end of 2011.

Snow Peak Mining Pty Ltd Take Over Dry River South Mine

In early 2013 it was announced that the Hong Kong investment company Snow Peak Mining Pty Ltd had signed an agreement to acquire the problematic Kagara Limited's North Queensland assets and that the mines operated by Kagara would be taken over by Snow Peak's fully owned Australian subsidiary Consolidated Tin Mines. Snow Peak had already had an interest in the Mt Garnet area where the Dry River South mine is located with its operation of a nearby tin mine.

Concentrator the Main Magnet Drawing Snow Peak Interests to Dry River South Assets

Dry River South workers were retrenched when the mine was placed on care and maintenance while Consolidated Tin Mines evaluate the viability of restructuring. The company has stated it plans to operate the Kagara concentrator at Mt Garnet, adjacent to the Dry River South Mine, to process copper from the Balcooma and Survey Mines on a short term basis. It is their long term plan to re-configure the concentrator to primarily process tin from their Mt Garnet Tin Project.

The Dry River South concentrator has a capacity to process 1,000,000 tonnes of copper and base metals a year. Its poly metallic and copper circuits handling 500,000 tonnes annually for each metal. The concentrator is only nine kilometres via a sealed road from Consolidated Tin's Gillian Tin deposit which has a near surface tin resource of three million tonnes of tin ore containing .78 percent tin.

Major Points in Mine Takeover Arrangements

Major points of the Snow Peak purchase of the Kagara assets include the following:

• -The one million tonne capacity concentrator in good operating condition
• -The strategic advantage to the company's ongoing development of its Mt Garnet Tin Mining Project
• -The concentrator will initially be used to process poly metallic and copper ore from Kagara's existing mines
• -The concentrator will eventually be re-configured to enable it to process tin bearing ore

What will eventually be the fate of the Dry River South Mine will depend greatly on how prices move into the future. At the moment Snow Peak Mining is intending to take full advantage of buoyant tin prices. In the meantime the Dry River South, Balcooma and Survey copper mines look as if they may have to play the waiting game.