Carbine Tungsten Ltd's (formerly Icon Resources Limited) Mount Carbine project, 120 kilometres northwest of Cairns in north Qld, contains the historic Mount Carbine deposit. The project includes a previous open-cut mine, tailings dams and low grade stockpile, all of which are being targeted by Carbine Tungsten. The tailing dams are estimated to contain approximately 2 Mt at 0.1% WO3. Carbine Tungsten opened a tailings re-treatment plant in March 2012, with an initial shipment of 1134 MTU of WO3 concentrate in late June 2012. The company announced that the grade of concentrate produced greatly exceeded expectations from the tailings recovery feasibility study. The company is hoping for final production of 5000 MTU a month from the re-treatment plant with an envisaged project life of around two to three years. Carbine Tungsten has an off-take agreement with Mitsubishi RtM Corporation Japan Ltd. Mount Carbine which was discovered late in the 19th century comprises wolframite and scheelite in sheeted quartz veins within metasedimentary rocks of the Hodgkinson Formation. Mineralisation is thought to be related to the nearby Permian Mount Carbine Granite. Recorded production3 at the mine totals 16.6 kt of wolfram as wolframite and scheelite concentrates. Mining at the deposit stopped in the late 1980s as a consequence of low tungsten prices. Carbine Tungsten completed a favourable feasibility study in July 2012 which investigated the economic viability of re-establishing the Mount Carbine tungsten mine. The study considered an open-cut, hard rock resource along with processing previously stockpiled low-grade material, which, together, would provide a 15-year project life. A result of this study was resource upgrades in June and August 2012, resulting in an Indicated Mineral Resource of 18.1 Mt at 0.14% WO3 and an Inferred Resource of 29.3 Mt at 0.12 % WO3 using a 0.05% WO3 cut-off for 48 kt of contained wolfram beneath and adjacent to the previous open-cut mine. Carbine Tungsten indicated that it considered the Indicated Resource is a Probable Reserve also, based on mining 3 Mtpa and receiving a price of US$290/MTU. The company has indicated that hard-rock mining would only commence after processing of the low-grade stockpile had begun. In September 2012, Carbine Tungsten released an Indicated Resource of 12 Mt at 0.07% WO3 for the low-grade stockpile. The company has reported a production target of 15 000 MTU of WO3 in concentrate a month from the low grade stockpile material which it suggests will have an 8-year mine life.
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