TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Calgary, Alberta-based TVI Pacific on Monday announced that it had stopped milling operations at its Canatuan mine, on the island of Mindanao, in the Philippines, after having exhausted its remaining ore stockpile.

The company said the mine would be shuttered pending the results of assessing various mine-life extension and expansion opportunities.

The TSX-listed firm said it expected to make at least one more shipment of copper concentrate.

Since completing construction in November 2008 of a sulphide production plant at Canatuan to process the underlying sulphide orebody containing copper and zinc, the TVI subsidiary TVI Resource Development Philippines (TVIRD), had completed 38 shipments of copper concentrate for a total volume of 195 660 dry metric tonnes (dmt) and seven shipments of zinc concentrate for a total volume of 30 548 dmt, compared with the 119 800 dmt of copper concentrate and 6 100 dmt of zinc concentrate first contemplated for the mine.

TVI said that the reserves mined had significantly exceeded the initial reserve estimates as a result of more material being found and mined. This material, consisting of banded sulphides with low-grade chlorite schists, was used in ore blending to optimise mill recoveries and was located both inside and outside the pit shell and not included in the original ore reserves.

The copper and zinc operations at the Canatuan mine had provided a 5.9-year mine life, compared with the original expected mine life of  five to six years. However, the actual mill throughput had been much higher than planned. Actual mill throughput in recent months was increased to about 3 500 t/d.

TVI said that the processing plant would be cleaned, but the equipment would not be dismantled while the company continued to assess mine life extension and expansion opportunities, including potentially processing mineralised waste dump material, possible new discoveries from exploration drill targets outside of the pit area, possible production of pyrite concentrates, re-processing tailings and exploiting possible economic deposits from outside the current MPSA (Malusok and SE Malusok).

TVIRD was pushing forward to seek regulatory approval to expand the current MPSA to include these deposits.