The Dry River South Deposit zinc, lead-rich polymetallic orebody is a sheet of massive pyritic sulphides that dips at a shallow angle to the ESE and plunges gently to the SSW. Massive pyritic sulphides lie along, and just below, the upper contact between highly altered felsic volcanics and relatively unaltered hanging-wall metasediments and extend for up to 250 m down-dip and approximately 800 m down-plunge. The orebody reaches a maximum thickness of about 15 m in structurally thickened domains. The orebody is delimited to the west by late faulting and an extensive body of quartz feldspar porphyry. Down-dip and down-plunge limits are defined by a decrease in sulphides. To the north, the DRS orebody is cut by a complex array of late faults including the NE-trending Andesite Fault. This is interpreted to represent the first stage of structural separation of the DRS orebody from the Surveyor orebody, which lies about 600 m to the north. Access is via a portal and decline from the Surveyor Mine open pit.

Currently operating at approximately 300ktpa.

Rehabilitation of the existing DRS decline and upper level access is ongoing. The rehabilitation includes the installation of cable bolts and fibrecrete using the existing mining fleet. Mining of ore from the remnants within the 200 Panel is completed and the focus is now the 400 Level.

Extraction of Dry River South underground employs Longhole Open Stoping as the mining method in the upper remnant zones with Modified Avoca Stoping to be used to extract the DRS deeps orebody. Development and rehabilitation is achieved using CSD owned Atlas Copco M2D twin boom Jumbos. Longhole production drilling is achieved using CSD owned Sandvik DL432i Production Drill. Teleremote loading in stope is done by CSD CAT R1700 and R2900 loaders and ore is trucked to surface using CSD CAT AD55 articulated dump trucks. Fibrecrete is used throughout the mine, with contractor run batching plant, sprayer and ancillary equipment on site. Ore from the Dry River South Mine is hauled 150 km to Mount Garnet by road-train for processing at the Mount Garnet Processing Plant.

Haulage of ore from the DRS mine to the Mt Garnet plant commenced in June 2018.

Mount Garnet Processing Plant currently processing ore from the Mt Garnet UG Mine and Dry River South UG Mine at a combined rate of approximately 500ktpa.

The Mount Garnet Processing Plan has an annual processing capacity of 1,000,000 tonnes of ore, comprising two individual circuits with shared infrastructure. One supergene copper circuit and one polymetallic circuit, with each circuit having a capacity of 500ktpa. Only the polymetallic circuit is in operation at this time with the supergene copper circuit held on care and maintenance.

Operation
A front-end loader (FEL) feeds ore from the ROM pad into a jaw crusher at a rate of approximately 200 t/h where it is crushed to less than 100 mm and then stockpiled on the Fine Ore Stockpile (FOS) via conveyor system. This material is then fed to the milling circuit via three feeders and a conveyor for further size reduction ........