Artemis Resources (ASX: ARV) has taken the next step to bringing the Radio Hill Processing Plant in the Pailbara region of Western Australia back to life.
The Australian miner acquired the Radio Hill plant earlier this year with the aim of providing Artemis with the capability to process a range of ores from its own projects in the West Pilbara region.
Ideally located close to the resources town of Karatha and the port of Dampier, the Radio Hill plant in its current state has a nominal capacity of 500 000 tonnes per annum, and according to Artemis, has been well maintained since it was put on care and maintenance in 2008.
Artemis Executive Chairman David Lenigas said the plant will be refurbished, upgraded and re-commissioned so the compant can prepare for production of gold, cobalt, copper, nickel, zinc and PGE’s from its growing resource base in the Karratha area.
The addition of a state of the art and modern gold processing circuit will also enable us to consider large scale bulk sampling of the conglomerate gold projects, Mr Lenigas said.
“Even though we are producing positive cashflow from copper sales from our Whundo Copper mine near Radio Hill, the board is committed to moving Artemis towards becoming significant multi-metals production company as soon as possible.”
Artemis has appointed experienced WA-based process engineers Trinol Pty Ltd as lead project managers to re-establish and re-commission the Radio Hill plant and infrastructure as a modern, world class treatment facility for the processing of base metal and gold ores.
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It is intended that the refurbishment works, which are expected to take about nine months to complete, will be principally funded by a special purpose loan facility designed to minimise the impact on Artemis’ current cash reserves. Artemis is already in discussions with a number of groups towards this goal.
In addition to upgrading the crushing, grinding and floatation circuits, the plan is to install a new gold high recovery gold circuit capable of processing 500,000 tonnes per annum.
Planning for a phase two expansion will also be undertaken to double the plant’s capacity in the near future.