Rocklands rolls on to meet market demand
By Industry Queensland
Austral Resources says it would need to double capacity at its North-West Queensland Rocklands operation to meet current demand for crushing copper sulphide ore.
Chief operating officer Shane O’Connell said the company was continually fielding inbound inquiries for additional capacity.
“The Rocklands facility has a 3Mt nameplate capacity and, with the amount of inquiries we’ve had, and on the provision that those third parties have the necessary mining approvals, we could fill the facility to around 5Mt a year,” he said.
“Copper is in demand and trading at historical highs, so all of those previously orphaned assets are now looking to be developed to monetise those ores.
“We’ve publicly put out a couple of MOUs for the likes of (junior miners) Maronan Metals and Transition Resources. Both cracking projects, very close to Cloncurry and there are others in the region that we’re currently in dialogue with.
“There’s a fair amount of metallurgical and other technical test work to be done, but we have confidence that the mill capacity is already full.
“The other thing we are doing in the interim is undertaking a fresh technical assessment of the Rocklands copper-gold resources to improve the overall confidence in the resource. The last thing we want to do as a company is make promises to the community that we can’t deliver on.”
Main image: The Rockland run of mine about 20km north-west of Cloncurry.
Share price jump
The company had been executing an umbrella strategy since acquiring Rocklands last year, Mr O’Connell said.
“We reset the strategy and, importantly, we executed on that strategy. We went out to the market, we said, ‘here are the three pillars of our strategy,’ which was essentially Mount Kelly, Rocklands and Loretta. These have now been executed.”
“When we re-listed at 5 cents, I think that was a huge discount for the business (but a bonus for those early investors), but it got the job done. We raised the funds and were oversubscribed in the end.
“Our strategy is to be a 50,000-tonnes-per-annum copper producer. And that’s up in the top percentile of copper producers in Australia.
“We’ve got the people, we’ve got the resources and now we have the facilities.
“We’ve got a lot of ground around Cloncurry that can feed into the Rocklands facility. Some of the resources are at very early stages, but now that we’ve got the funds, we can develop them to where they need to be.”
Austral Resources’ share price jumped in January and closed last night at $0.125.
Background:
Austral acquired the Rocklands operation last year from administrators. The project has had a chequered, on-again off-again history, never reaching its nameplate potential and twice entering administration, which damaged its reputation with suppliers.
The operation, which includes a multi-million-dollar processing circuit, began production in 2016. Original owner CuDeco went into administration in 2018.
Copper Resources Australia, then owner of the Mount Cuthbert mine to the north, bought the operation in 2021 before itself going into administration in 2024. It was subsequently acquired by Austral Resources.
Disclaimer – the author is an Austral Resources shareholder.
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