Cannington Mine

 lead production / processing, silver mine

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Located in north west Queensland, Cannington (BHP Billiton 100 per cent) is a fly-in fly-out mining and processing operation that has grown to become the world's largest and lowest cost producer of silver and lead.

The Cannington mine site operation consists of an underground mine accompanied by a metallurgical processing facility. Both open-stope and bench mining methods are used at Cannington, while grinding, sequential flotation and leaching techniques are used to produce high-grade marketable lead and zinc concentrates that contain high silver content.

For the financial year ending 30 June 2007, Cannington achieved a production record for the operation’s history with 2.9 million tonnes of ore mined and 2.35 million tonnes of ore processed.

The operation includes a rail-loading facility at Yurbi, about 15 kilometres east of Cloncurry, and a modern minerals concentrate handling facility at the Port of Townsville.

Yurbi
The lead and zinc concentrates from the processing plant are stored in a 10,000-tonne capacity storage shed adjacent to the plant. Cannington has entered into a partnering agreement with McIvor Bulk Transport to haul the concentrates 180 kilometres from the mine site to the storage and rail-loading facilities at Yurbi, some 15 kilometres east of Cloncurry. The route travels along the Cannington to McKinlay shire road and then on the National Highway from McKinlay to Yurbi.

The side tipping trailers are emptied at Yurbi using an overhead crane and stored in separate stockpiles in the 10,000-tonne, totally enclosed storage shed.

The concentrate is then loaded by front-end loader at Yurbi into the new Queensland Rail GSZY class rail wagons built specifically for Cannington. Queensland Rail has supplied 50 wagons, each capable of taking 62.5 tonnes. Normally 45 wagons are used in a train set, carrying some 2,800 tonnes of concentrate 800 kilometres to the Port of Townsville. Queensland Rail has adopted the use of the Ecofab fibreglass lid, which is securely locked onto each wagon to prevent any dust emission during the journey to Townsville, which takes just less than 24 hours.

Port of Townsville
Cannington has built its own concentrate storage and ship-loading facilities in Townsville. The Queensland Rail wagons are unloaded in a 1,500-tonnes-per-hour-capacity rotary tippler and the concentrates are conveyed to a 40,000-tonnes-capacity, totally enclosed storage shed where each concentrate is stockpiled separately.

A front-end loader is used to reclaim the concentrate onto a conveyor which takes the material to a shiploader. A fully automated, three-stage sampling plant is used to provide shipping samples.

This ship loader is located on the purpose-built no.11 Wharf located in the outer harbour and is a luffing boom type, a 8.5-metre LAT turning basin, 12.2-metre loading pocket and 11.7-metre departure channel were specifically dredged for the no. 11 wharf.

The ship loader has a nominal capacity of 1,200 tonne per hour, capable of fully loading a 45,000 deadweight-tonne vessel.



Reference for information:
www.bhpbilliton.com/bb/ourBusinesses/baseMetals/canning...