Zinc mine in Australia will be put into operation faster by the decision of the Chinese shareholders

The timing of the start of zinc mining in the mining field will be postponed to 2017. Previously, the Australian company MMG had planned to start production in the first half of 2018. The lion’s share of stock of the company owned by a Chinese Corporation. Namely China Minmetals Corporation has decided to postpone.

The cost of this project is approximately $ 1.5 billion. Planned production per year of ore is estimated at 170 thousand tons of zinc concentrate. Company representatives say that the mine will enter the top 10 in the world for the extraction of zinc. The project is called Dugald River. The same with the name of the river flowing in the North-West of Queensland. It is at this Australian site and will start production of raw materials.

Guide the MMG in June of 2017 reported about the readiness of the project to 73%. Required to complete the amount of investment amounted to 600 million dollars. However, the economic figures were better than predicted. Such positive results were made possible earlier opening of the mine. Also, the reason for such haste was the desire of the company to take advantage of the increased demand for zinc. At the moment the cost of raw materials is on the biggest level since 2007. A ton of zinc in this year is about 3.1 thousand dollars.

In 2017 the Australian company has increased the amount of profit almost half. This year the net profit amounted to about 207 million dollars. The company also managed to increase the analytical rate before taxes. It was about a billion dollars, which exceeded last year’s figure of 7.5%.