The Lady Loretta Mine, located north west of Mount Isa in Queensland, Australia, will extract 1 Mtpa for zinc and lead production.
The Lady Loretta Mine, located north west of Mount Isa in Queensland, Australia, will extract 1 Mtpa for zinc and lead production.
Beca was engaged to carry out an update of the previous pre-feasibility studies undertaken in 2001.
Beca designed the following mine enabling infrastructure:
- Plant layout- revised plant layout to optimise bulk earthworks
- Roads – assessed alternative routes to optimise 36km access road to plant site
- Water Supply – evaluated 40km overland pipeline route and pumped delivery of raw water from groundwater supply.
- Tailings management – reviewed existing slurry disposal facility with dams; developed basis for dry stack alternative
- Water Balance – assessed merits of reservoir storage for raw water
- Airfield – evaluation of mine airfield for fly-in/fly-out facilities
- Concentrate Transport – storage and loadout facilities
- Power Supply – assessed options to supply annual consumption of 125,000 MWh.
A key deliverable was the 3D model in Project Design Management System based on data from the client and the 2001 Feasibility Study 2D plant layouts. The model was used to optimise the process plant layout to achieve gravity flows through the floatation cells.
The Beca Pre-Feasibility Update study was delivered to the client in October 2006.
Changes in the resources market subsequently saw a request from the client for an Updated Pre-feasibility Study, which provided a robust technical basis for the project which complied with the client’s internal requirements for a Pre-Feasibility (FEL2) Study. This assisted the client’s understanding of the viability of the mine in the market conditions, and allowed the project to proceed to the Feasibility Study (FEL3) stage in 2007.