According to its latest quarter report, after spending almost A$12 million in the September quarter in commissioning its Drakelands open pit mine at the Hemerdon tungsten/tin project, in Devon, Wolf Minerals reports that it has fully drawn down the £75 million senior debt finance.
Drakelands is the first new metal mine to be built in the UK for over 40 years.
The company commissioned the mine in September and has shipped the first concentrates to customers in the USA and Austria in terms of its offtake agreement.
The company is currently trialling a 7-days a week operation through to March 2016. If the trial is successful Wolf will apply to make the arrangement permanent. A permanent change would increase available operating time by more than 27% in comparison to the original permission for a 5½ day working week and provide the opportunity to produce additional volumes of tungsten and tin concentrates with no further capital expenditure. It also provides the opportunity to lower operating costs, pushing the operation further down the tungsten concentrate production cost curve, as well as generate additional employment opportunities.
The company will continue to ramp up the plant to full production by early 2016 and once in full production the mine will produce 3,000 t/y of concentrates and be one of the world’s largest producers of the strategic metal, tungsten, outside of China.
Wolf trialling 7-days a week operations at its new UK mine: WLFE