Canada Silver Cobalt Works Inc. has announced that its 100%-owned Temiskaming Testing Labs (TTL) high-grade processing plant, that has zero discharge, is fully operational and ready for processing the high-grade mineralized material from the Cobalt Camp into silver dore bars as it was originally designed to do.
“We have rebuilt the TTL facility, including upgrades to the secondary crushing circuit and installation of a new gravity plant. TTL is now ready to begin the processing of high-grade mineralized material and tailings from mining properties in the area, including tailings from the Company’s past-producing Beaver Mine and Castle Mine. This is another important step in building our capability as a fully integrated mining operation right through to the production of silver dore bars,” stated CEO Frank J. Basa, P.Eng.
The 20,000-square-foot TTL facility is located in the Town of Cobalt, Ontario, in the centre of the historic Cobalt Mining Camp where 600 million ounces of silver and 30 million pounds of cobalt were produced during the 1900s. The facility was originally established in its current location by the Ontario government in 1941 as a public service facility offering laboratory services, high-grade ore processing and a bullion furnace to nearby mining operations. It was used by companies such as Agnico Eagle and Teck in their early days of silver mining operations in the area to pour in excess of two million ounces silver annually in silver dore bars. Using TTL’s bullion furnace, Canada Silver Cobalt poured three silver dore bars from Castle Mine waste material as a proof-of-concept test in 2019.
Canada Silver Cobalt completed the purchase of the TTL facility from a private operator in 2020. Since then, it has conducted a number of test runs and completed the commissioning of the secondary crushing circuit. As a result, TTL has a complete crushing and screening high-grade processing plant with a 20-tonne-per-hour capacity for high-grade mineralized feed from mining operations in the area (see news release September 8, 2021).
In addition, the Company recently installed a new gravity plant at TTL that is closed loop with a water recycle step (see news release January 18, 2022). The two-stage gravity plant, which is designed to operate at 24 tonnes per day, is now fully commissioned and includes a spiral concentrator feeding the concentrate to a conventional gravity table. A supplementary Falcon high-grade gravity concentrator is currently being installed.
The Company intends to use TTL for processing high-grade mineralized material from its Castle and Beaver mines as well as from the Castle East high-grade silver deposit when it has access to the high-grade veins there through the building of a ramp which is currently in the planning stage.