Mt.Milligan

The Mt. Milligan property is located within the Omenica Mining Division in North Central British Columbia, Canada approximately 155 km northwest of Prince George, 86 km north of Fort St. James, 95 km west of Mackenzie. Mt. Milligan's primary access will be from Fort St. James, although access can also beb gained from the east via Mackenzie.

At the end of 2007, total measured and indicated resources stood at 417.1 Mt grading 0.21% copper, 0.41g/t gold for 1,934 million lbs copper and 5.5 million oz gold.

Large scale open pit mining will provide mill feed at a nominal rate of 60,000 t/d (21.9 Mt/a). Annual mine production of ore and waste will peak at 42 Mt/a, with a life-of-mine stripping ratio of 0.74/1. Estimated mine life: 14.5 years.

The operation will be carried out with an initial equipment fleet comprising 311 mm electric blasthole drills, 30 m3 electric cable shovels, 16 m3 front end loaders, and 240 t trucks. These will be supplemented with back-up equipment of graders, track, and rubber-tired dozers. A 15 m bench height has been selected for mining both ore and waste. The overall mining sequence was developed through a series of seven mining pushbacks specific to the MBX, 66 Zone, and SS phases.

The Mt. Milligan concentrator is designed to process 60,000 t/d of ore to produce a marketable concentrate containing copper, gold, and silver. The process will use a conventional bulk rougher/scavenger flotation followed by regrinding and three stages of cleaner flotation.

The concentrator will consist of the following: a primary crushing plant, including a 1,525 x 2,870 mm gyratory crusher; a coarse ore stockpile; a SAG/ball mill/crusher (SABC) grinding circuit, including one 20 MW SAG mill, 12,200 diameter x 6,710 mm, two 13 MW ball mills, 7,620 diameter x 12,200 mm, two 750 kW pebble crushers. Flotation circuits include: rougher flotation (fourteen 200 m3 tank cells in two trains; 1st cleaner flotation) seven 100 m3 tank cells; 2nd and 3rd cleaner flotation (six 30 m3 tank cells). Regrinding circuits and a gravity concentration circuit, including: five 1.1 MW tower mills; one centrifugal concentrator. A concentrate dewatering circuit.

The reagents which will be used include potassium amyl xanthate (PAX) and A3477 as collectors, methyl isobutyl carbinol (MIBC) as a frother and pebble lime as a pH regulator.

Power will be transmitted via a 230 kV power line from the existing Kennedy BC Hydro utility transformer station located just south Mackenzie.