The mine exploits the Zn-Pb deposit, which was discovered in 1970. The orebody lies between 50 and 1000 metres below the surface and extends over an area of 6.5 kilometres by 1.5 kilometers.

The overall geology in the Tara mine area mainly consists of series of sediments, volcanics and intrusives. All of the series are structurally complex and lithologically varied. The mineralization forms a series of sulphide lenses within these Pale Beds. Overall, the Pale Beds are considered to have a fair to good rock mass quality with a moderate to high rock strength. Above the Pale Beds is an area containing Shaley Pales (Boliden Tara Mines, 2013). Contained in the Shaley Pales is a well-bedded calcarenite based lithology. In some sections, it is dominated by Argillite and by Calcarenite or Sandstone in others.

In Tara mine, two different mining methods are currently used. These mining methods are open stoping and drift-and-slash mining.

Ore production encompasses the drilling, blasting and removal of the ore from underground deposits. Broken ore is delivered to one of five underground primary crushers and reduced in size to less than 150 millimetres before being hoisted to the surface. Ore is then fed to an Autogenous grinding mill which grinds the ore to a fine powder which is then pumped as aqueous slurry to metallurgic flotation cells.

Within the flotation cells, galena (Lead sulphide) and sphalerite (Zinc sulphide) are differentially separated, while undesirable minerals such as pyrite are depressed. Once the target minerals have been extracted the tailings stream is cycloned to separate the coarse sand fraction from the finer slimes fraction. The coarse fraction of tailings is pumped, to the underground mined out areas. In so doing, approximately 50% of the tailings are used underground to backfill mined voids. The tailings used for backfilling is stabilised, chemically and physically, by mixing with ........