A specialised piece of machinery loaned from Lady Loretta Mine has helped boost operational efficiency at Mount Isa Copper Operations (MICO), according to Glencore.

Early in March, the S63 ore pass, one of the underground mining zones at MICO, developed logistical issues that required the drilling of a vertical shaft to allow reliable ore flow to the crusher.

Senior raisebore and drilling operations specialist Mick Chiauzzi said the assistance of Lady Loretta Mine and Redpath saved a lot of time and planning at MICO.

“We didn’t have a raisebore drill onsite with the capacity to drill the vertical shaft, and so thanks to the team at LLM, we were able to borrow their boxhole rig to drill the required vertical raise,” he said.

Standing at 3.1m tall, the LLM Redpath boxhole rig ‘Redbore 30MDUR’ is a small capacity raisebore rig capable of drilling an upwards vertical bore at a 1m diameter.

Conventional drill rigs at MICO are capable of downward drilling only.

“Redpath and the MICO raiseboring teams worked to plan the packing down of the rig to ensure it could be transported in the R62 cage to level 21C and installed at the S63 site on level 30A,” Mr Chiauzzi said.

The drilling was completed efficiently and successfully.