In a red-letter milestone for the company, Larvotto Resources has kicked off staged commissioning at its Hillgrove antimony-gold mine in New South Wales, marking the next step in a carefully sequenced restart that began underground at its nearby Metz mine.
Larvotto’s underground contractor PYBAR has been pushing forward with the Metz workings and rehabilitating old drives since mining restarted, with first development ore delivered to surface stockpiles in May and ore stockpiles continuing to build since then.
That ore has now begun moving from stockpiles to the run-of-mine pad, before being fed into the primary jaw crusher, closed-circuit secondary crusher and screening circuit. From there, the material is then conveyed to the fine ore bin.
The company says the crushing, screening and fine ore storage section has been successfully commissioned as the first stage of the plant restart. The resulting ore is now sitting in storage ready to feed the milling circuit during the upcoming phase of wet-end commissioning.
Once the fine ore bin is full, Larvotto plans to run the crushing circuit on waste for a limited period to generate crushed rock for various engineering requirements, allowing more time to bed the crushing system down.
It will also give operators familiarisation time on the circuit. EPCM contractor Interquip, meanwhile, is completing its work on the communications, electrical, instrumentation and control systems at the wet end of the plant before that phase is commissioned.
Hillgrove is forecast to become Australia’s second and largest producing antimony mine, with Larvotto pointing to the planned production of around 4900 tonnes of antimony -almost seven per cent of global production - and more than 40,000 ounces of gold a year across the current seven-year mine life.
The company says its tungsten testwork is continuing, with multiple zones of tungsten mineralisation identified and unrecovered tungsten from previous operations sitting in the old tailings dam, all pointing to the potential for a third critical minerals string to Hillgrove’s bow.
Larvotto Resources managing director Ron Heeks said: “The commencement of commissioning is a defining milestone for Larvotto and reflects the significant progress made over the past twelve months since the plant refurbishment started. To reach this point is a tremendous achievement by our operations team and Interquip, the build contractors, and demonstrates the quality of execution, especially given the unique challenges that were, and continue to be, created by the Hormuz conflict on equipment deliveries.”
Larvotto’s marketing pathways are also falling into place. Last month, the company locked in a binding seven-year offtake deal with Glencore International for its Hillgrove gold concentrate, complementing its previously announced antimony concentrate agreement with Wogen Resources. The Glencore agreement is expected to cover 15,000 dry metric tonnes of gold concentrate a year.
Larvotto is also pushing ahead with its Modification 5 application process with the NSW government, seeking approval to lift its processing capacity from 250,000 to 500,000 tonnes a year, while also enabling dry-stack tailings and other environmental improvements.
The company says responses to questions from the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure and other stakeholders are being finalised and are expected to be submitted by the end of July. Larvotto does not view the matters raised as material issues, instead describing them as being part of the appropriate level of review expected for a project of Hillgrove’s scale and strategic importance.
With ore already passing through the front end of the plant, offtake partners signed up for its key concentrate products and the early stages of its process plant commissioning underway, Hillgrove is steadily working through its transition from development to a producing mine.
For Larvotto, the next few weeks will be all about transforming a historic mining field into a modern critical minerals operation, with antimony and gold leading the production charge and the prospect of a valuable tungsten by-product adding another layer of upside.
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By Doug Bright
