Aim-listed tungsten, tin and gold mining company W Resources has signed a contract with Francisco Pereira Marinho and Irmaos (FPMI) to provide haulage and crushing services to its Régua tungsten mine, in northern Portugal.

The company said that ore from Régua would be hauled 27 km to the existing FPMI crusher and crushed to a range of 5 mm to 10 mm. The crushed ore would be processed to tungsten concentrate using W’s existing La Parrilla concentrator plant, which would be moved from Spain to Régua.

As part of the service contract, FPMI would use the waste ore for rehabilitation of its existing quarry.

"Régua is a high-grade, low-capital-cost tungsten mine development with significant scope to increase the resource base, which is currently under way. The haulage and crushing services contract with FPMI allows W to advance Régua to development with efficient capital deployment.

"Our aim is to bring Régua into commercial production with sensible capital deployment leveraging contract mining, haulage and crushing contracts, thereby keeping the capital costs of development low. The FPMI contract is an important step in achieving this objective," chairperson Michael Masterman commented in a statement.

Meanwhile, W also provided an update on its La Parrilla project, where the jig plant has been commissioned to a design throughput of 300 t/d. More than 3 500 t of jig preconcentrate had been processed through to concentrate.

The miner said that it had intentionally commissioned the jig plant with low grade ore in the start-up phase and that it will move to higher grade feed next week.

Production of concentrate restarted this month and would increase significantly to 20 t of concentrate in July, with the move to 24-hour production at the existing concentrator and the move to materially higher grade ore supply.

W has built a new, large scale concentrator at La Parilla, which would be commissioned in July.

W also owns the São Martinho gold project in central Portugal, which is proceeding through the regulatory process.