Mt carbine

The Mt Carbine tungsten project is located 120 kilometres north west of Cairns in far north Queensland, it is accessible via a sealed road and is situated on granted mining leases with tailings storage, water, power and substantial stockpiles of tungsten ore.

Mt Carbine Gets Final Approval to Develop a World Class Tungsten Mine

The project is owned by Carbine Tungsten,which in 2013 received final†approval to go ahead with the construction of a tungsten processing facility to process its substantial tungsten ore stockpiles prior to recommencing mining at its hard rock tungsten mine.

Mt Carbine was discovered near the end of the 19th†century and has been a major tungsten producer since that time. Despite this activity the deposit has remained relatively unexplored to this day. For this reason the deposit was considered to have considerable exploration potential for further tungsten mineralisation discovery within the mining leases.

Mt Carbine has Always Produced High Grade Tungsten at low Production Costs

When the Mt Carbine mine was operational between 1973 and 1987 it produced very high grade of concentrate with the lowest quartile production cost among all the world's tungsten producers. Carbine Tungsten has now become a major tungsten concentrate producer mainly from processing stockpiles from its Mt Carbine tungsten mine through its tailings retreatment project that began production in 2012 and its planned re-commissioning of the hard rock open cut mine that is to become productive in 2014.

The recently acquired approvals include the ore processing facility which has a capacity to handle up to three million tonnes of ore a year, the new hard rock processing facility and the mining of 12 million tonnes of stockpiled tungsten ore. The approval that was granted by the Queensland State Department of Environment and Heritage Protection was the final approval required before construction could begin. Besides allowing the current tailings reclaiming plan to go ahead, the approval also allows Carbine Tungsten to considerably increase its tungsten production rate.

Mt Carbine has Off-take Agreement With Mitsubishi Corporation

Tungsten Resources Pty Ltd wholly owns the Mt Carbine Tungsten project. Its long term off-take partner Mitsubishi Corporation RtM Japan has a 2.7 percent stake in Tungsten Resources Pty Ltd. Mitsubishi Corporation's investment represents the value of the environmental and engineering works completed for the stock pile project at the Mt Carbine mine which gives Mitsubishi Corporation the ownership rights to 80 percent of the tungsten produced from the stockpile and 50 percent off-take from the former open pit mines, when they once again become productive.

Mitsubishi Corporations involvement is allowing Carbine Tungsten to fully complete its development program involving the tungsten stockpiles as well as allow the company to re-invigorate the former open pit mines.

Mt Carbine Trasitioning to Hard Rock Mining

Mt Carbine Tungsten is now transitioning from being a primarily tailings retreatment operation to hard rock mining. Since the Mt Carbine mine was last operational major advances have been made in the efficiency and type of ore sorters used. Carbine Tungsten have undertaken trials using a state- of-the-art transmission x-ray ore sorter of bulk samples. These samples were taken from its low grade stockpile that had been left untreated since the previous mining operation. The results were heartening in that the†sorting achieved a conservative upgrade more than eight times greater than the bulk sample grade previously tested. These results have been looked on as being a 'game changer' as far as the re-development of Mt Carbine is concerned.