EQ Resources is on the verge of a five-fold increase in tungsten concentrate output at Mount Carbine as it prepares to tap higher grade ore through open pit mining.

The company this week announced it had secured the required environmental authority to mine the the Andy White pit at the Far North Queensland operation.

“That’s the last piece of the puzzle – we’re moving into the open pit and we’re scheduling a ramp- up in June,” chief executive officer Kevin MacNeill said.

The operation, which currently employs about 100, will lift its workforce to about 150 – with expressions of interest called about a month ago for drive-in, drive out jobs at the mine.

“We’re going to put buses on to Mareeba and Port Douglas and then bus people in so they can stay at their homes at night as opposed to flying in and flying out staff,” Mr MacNeill said.

Related: Mount Carbine to spawn minerals cluster

It is the latest step in what has been an incremental build-up at the historical mining site, north-west of Cairns.

The operation has been extracting tungsten from tailings and waste rock dump, fine-tuning and upgrading crushing and screening infrastructure along the way.

“The big difference is the open-pit ore is about five times higher grade than what we’ve been doing – so (the production increase comes) without doing any additional work really, except for the mining of it, – the crushing screening, processing, safety … everything’s in place,” he said.

“It’s just the last piece of the puzzle, the mining contractor coming in and delivering us high-grade ore. That’s the beauty of it.”

EQ Resources executed an early engagement contract with Golding Contractors in mid-2022.

The new ore should ramp up concentrate output from about 40-60 tonnes a month to 300 tonnes, Mr MacNeill said.

Open-pit mining is expected to run for about six years, before the operation heads underground.

And the company has made significant announcements in recent weeks on drill results from its Iron Duke discovery and a western extension that is shaping up as a second deposit in the Mount Carbine area.

“And these are all outside the existing pit outlined. So the pit only makes up about 15 per cent of the known tungsten at Mount Carbine.”

The most recent drill results released from work west of the Andy White open pit included:

– 2.48m at 0.69 per cent tungsten trioxide from 75.11m (hole EQ030 – Western Extension)

– 1.00m at 1.90 per cent tungsten trioxide from 213.42m (hole EQ030 – Western Extension)

– 18.24m at 1.00 per cent tungsten trioxide from 387.25m, including 5.51m at 3.20 per cent tungsten trioxide from 387.25m (hole EQ030 – Western Extension)

– 2.82m at 1.81 per cent tungsten trioxide from 140.10m, including 1.19m at 3.89 per cent tungsten trioxide from 140.84m (hole EQ031 – Western Extension)

Below: A projection of the Mount Carbine mineral resource (in red) including the new systems confirmed in the most recent drill program – with purple showing the high-grade intersected zones. The Andy White mine pit is shown in grey and the historic decline highlighted in orange.