The Century Mine is a major zinc mining operation located about 250km north-west of Mount Isa near the Gulf of Carpentaria. Discovered in 1990, the deposit became one of the largest zinc mines in the world and was developed as a large open-cut operation.

Mining at Century involved conventional open-pit methods, with ore processed through an on-site concentrator to produce zinc concentrate, along with smaller quantities of lead concentrate and silver. A distinctive feature of the operation was a 304km underground slurry pipeline that transported zinc concentrate from the mine to a dewatering facility at Karumba on the Gulf of Carpentaria for export.

The mine commenced production in 1999 and operated for nearly two decades before open-pit mining ended in 2016. Since then, the site has transitioned to reprocessing tailings to recover additional zinc through a project known as Century Restart, operated by New Century Resources.

Century has played a major role in Queensland’s base metals industry and remains one of the most significant zinc deposits ever developed in Australia.