The Mt Carbine mine site is located within the Siluro-Devonian Hodgkinson sedimentary province. The thick sedimentary sequence was complexly folded and regionally metamorphosed prior to and during extensive granitic intrusions in the Carboniferous and Permian.

Within the permit north-north-west trending Hodgkinson Formation turbidite and siltstones are intruded by the Mareeba Granite dated at 277My, and the Mt Alto Granite, dated at 271±5My (Bultitude et al., 1999). Contact metamorphic aureoles marked by formation of cordierite Hornfels surround the granite intrusive and numerous acid to intermediate dykes intrude the metasediments. In the western portion of the tenement, a prominent metabasalt-chert ridge is a significant Hodgkinson formation stratigraphic component.

Mineralisation
The Mt Carbine tungsten deposit consists of a number of vertical to sub vertical sheeted quartz veins ranging in width up to 7m but averaging around 50cm. Only about 20% of the quartz veins are mineralised due to an early barren quartz event and a later mineralising quartz event. Economic minerals are the tungsten minerals of scheelite and wolframite mineralisation that occur in the ratio of 1:4 respectively.

A typical section through the canter of the deposit has over 35 quartz veins ranging from 10cm to 7m in width with 5-8 zones of overprinting mineralised quartz veins of 10 -150cm widths. These high grade veins containing rich quartz - feldspar tung ........

The Mt Carbine mine is a surface operation, with two sources of tungsten ore available – an in-situ open pit resource and a historical low-grade stockpile. Ore Reserves are 3.54Mt at 0.33% WO3 and 10.0Mt at 0.075% WO3 for open Pit and LGS respectively.

The planned open pit is essentially a deepening by 95m of the current historical open pit from a 315m RL down to a 220m RL pit floor. The footprint of the new pit is an increase by 12% in size. The extension will extract a total of 14.4Mt of rock in the current design.

Extraction from both sources will be undertaken by conventional excavator and truck fleets. Selective ore mining practices will be employed in the in-situ open pit, with bulk ore mining of the LGS occurring due to local grade variability and lack of historical records.

Ore from both sources will be treated at a dry processing plant prior to concentrate production at the gravity plant. Through this process, ore grade to the gravity plant is significantly improved, with an associated reduction in mass.

The primary operational constraints are as follows:
• Processing plant capacity of ~408kt per annum (Gravity Plant);
• Mobile fleet capacity of ~4.9Mt per annum total material movement.

Based on these constraints a life of mine (LOM) schedule has been developed. Following regulatory approvals, a four-year contract mining operation of the in-situ reserves will be undertaken, with supplementary LGS ........

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