NQ Minerals (NEX:NQMI), the base and precious metals producer from its flagship Hellyer Gold Mine in Tasmania Australia, today announced that December 2019 saw another excellent month for production, with 3,049 tonnes of lead concentrate production and 1,827 tonnes of zinc concentrate production (refer to Table 2). Note that all numbers in this release are from NQ’s 100% owned subsidiary Hellyer Gold Mines Pty Ltd.
David Lenigas, Chairman of NQ Minerals, commented:
“Hellyer has seen an excellent December and Fourth Quarter performance. We are particularly pleased with the efforts on site with respect to increasing metal recovery and have seen increased recovery trends in both our lead and zinc circuits continue, with average lead recoveries in December exceeding 50% for the first time. Lead concentrates are the prime source of revenues at Hellyer and the refinements to the lead circuit will continue to be the plant’s operational focus in 2020. Provisional unaudited financial results for Hellyer Gold Mines Pty Ltd will be released shortly.”
Fourth Quarter (“Q4”) production therefore also resulted in a record, with 8,160 tonnes of lead concentrate and 4,904 tonnes of zinc concentrate production (refer to Table 1).
Table 1: Hellyer Operations – Production Performance for Q4 2019.
| Reconciled Production | Q4 | Q3 | Q2 | Q1 | Full Year |
| Lead Concentrate (tonnes) | 8,160 | 6,656 | 5,452 | 4,712 | 24,980 |
| Zinc Concentrate (tonnes) | 4,904 | 3,310 | 4,416 | 3,015 | 15,646 |
| Pyrite Concentrate (tonnes) | 20,881 | 10,109 | 28,375 | 18,488 | 77,853 |
Note: Majority of Hellyer’s revenue (typically around 70%) is attributable to lead concentrates.
Table 2: Hellyer Operations – Production Performance for December 2019.
| Mined tonnes: | 70,301 tonnes |
| Processed tonnes: | 70,228 tonnes |
| · Lead grade % | 3.05% |
| · Zinc Grade % | 2.39% |
| · Gold Grade | 2.52 grams/tonne (“g/t”) |
| · Silver Grade | 89.7 g/t |
| Lead Concentrates Produced | 3,049 tonnes |
| · Lead Recovery % | 54.40% |
| · Lead % | 38.26% |
| · Gold grade | 3.79 g/t |
| · Silver grade | 655 g/t |
| Zinc Concentrates Produced | 1,827 tonnes |
| · Zinc Recovery % | 48.49% |
| · Zinc Grade % | 44.58% |
| · Silver grade | 163 g/t |
