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Sustainability Report 2015 37
BACKGROUND
The Jaguar Operation comprises approximately
395.4 square kilometres of tenements. The area has
historically hosted three economically viable underground
mines; the first discovered was the Teutonic Bore. The
Jaguar deposit was discovered in 2002 approximately 4km
south of the Teutonic Bore and the most recent discovery,
the Bentley deposit, was discovered in 2008.
The Jaguar Operation was acquired by IGO as part of the
takeover of Jabiru Metals Limited in 2011. The Operation
now consists of the nearby Bentley zinc-copper-silver-
gold underground mine, the Jaguar processing facility,
administration infrastructure, and the accommodation
village. Operations in the Jaguar underground mine
ended at the start of FY2014, and, as a result, all FY2015
mill production ore is expected to be sourced from the
Bentley deposit.
IGO’s operations involve the underground mining of
ore and waste rock. Traditional stope mining methods
are employed. Ore is processed on site at a nominal
rate of 450 to 480 ktpa. The processing plant has been
designed to recover copper and zinc by ore crushing,
milling, classification, flotation, thickening, and concentrate
filtration.
The plant produces a saleable copper sulphide product
containing 25 to 28% copper and zinc sulphide product
containing 48 to 50% zinc. Additionally, IGO receives
credits for the silver and gold that is incidentally captured
in our concentrates.
Once filtered the concentrate contains about 10%
moisture. Copper and zinc concentrates are packaged into
sealed sea containers and transported 720km from site to
Geraldton Port for export.
Jaguar’s workforce is predominantly FIFO with some
employees drive-in drive-out.
In FY2015, the Jaguar Operation produced a total of
485,302 tonnes of ore exclusively from the Bentley
underground mine which produced 93,093 tonnes of Zinc
concentrate and 28,936 tonnes of copper concentrate.
The mining process at the Jaguar Operation results in the
creation of underground voids. Where the surrounding
rock is also to be mined, these voids must be backfilled to
prevent the collapse of the new mining areas. At Jaguar
this is achieved by backfilling voids with waste rock and
cement aggregate fill (CAF).
At present, exploration activity at Jaguar is carried out
from both underground and surface drill sites.
The Jaguar Operation has required the clearance of
342 ha of natural bush to date.
OPERATIONS