The Australia-headquartered miner confirmed both trial mining and toll treatment processing from its wholly owned project will start in the September quarter.
Initial production and processing rates will range between 1,500t and 3,000t per month, assuming grading of about 15% and combined zinc and lead ore processing. The high-grade mineralisation will be processed on a toll treatment basis through a nearby sulphide flotation processing facility.
Azure officials said there is scope to increase the mine's production rate if additional processing capacity becomes available.
The miner said it has examined the potential for the trial mining and toll processing activities since late last year. It would like to deliver an early cash flow from Oposura to help finance its feasibility study.
The current funding to allow trial mining was obtained from shareholder Deutsche Batalon.
"This operation will provide additional confidence for development of the full-scale mining and processing operation at Oposura, while the delivery of high-quality concentrates ahead of full-scale production will support future concentrate marketing and project financing negotiations," managing director Tony Rovira said.
Oposura's JORC resource totals 2.9Mt at 5% zinc, 2.8% lead and 17g/t of silver. It will begin mining with shallow open pits, followed up with underground room-and-pillar (bord-and-pillar) extraction. Its initial mine life estimation is 5.3 years.
