Australia's Red River Resources secured a copper concentrate offtake deal with Glencore International, which will last for three years from the upcoming commencement of commercial production at its Thalanga zinc, copper mine in central Queensland, the miner said Tuesday.
Glencore will take delivery of the copper concentrate at the Thalanga mine gate.
"Being able to deliver concentrate at the mine gate to Glencore is very advantageous to both companies, showing the culmination of a highly competitive copper concentrate offtake process that commenced at the end of 2016," Red River said in a filing to the Australian Securities Exchange.
Red River is also close to finalizing offtake agreements for the lead and zinc concentrate streams, the company said.
Red River is to restart commercial concentrate production at its 650,000 mt/year Thalanga zinc project by the fourth quarter, and is planning a utilization rate of 300,000-400,000 mt/year, the miner said.
Its refurbishment program is scheduled to be completed by Q3, with estimated production restart in Q4.
The Thalanga mine was placed on active care and maintenance by Australia's Kagara Limited in 2012. Red River in 2014 acquired the Thalanga operations from Kagara, and in late 2015 released a study on the viability of resuming commercial production.
The Thalanga mine can produce separate copper, zinc and lead concentrates, with sufficient capacity in the existing tailings storage facility for an initial five years of planned production, according to its website.
Thalanga will have an annual average concentrate output of 21,400 mt of zinc, 3,600 mt of copper, 5,000 mt of lead, 2,000 oz of gold and 370,000 oz of silver-in-concentrate over an initial mine life of five years, according to the company.
