How New Century has delivered economic mine site rehabilitation to the Century deposit and maintained the social license to operate while building for future growth

T he first mining lease in the region of Australia ’ s North West Queensland was issued way back in 1890 . However , it was not until 100 years later when Rio Tinto ’ s exploration arm completed the discovery of “ big zinc ” that large scale mining become possible , hence they named it the Century deposit . This was sold on to Pasminco , which took the open cut zinc , lead and silver mine into production in 1997 . While the pipeline and port facility could handle a million tonnes per annum of concentrates , a slow floating ore body meant that Pasminco was faced with metallurgical challenges to optimise production and maximise returns from the operation . The choices available were to increase available residence time through building additional floatation capacity or increase throughput at the sacrifice of recoveries . The latter was chosen due to the lower capital requirements and the large resource available . This ultimately led to the substantial mineral resource in the tailings dam , and the opportunity for New Century .