Massive new mill begins to arrive at Navan mine

A giant grinding mill which is part of a massive €27 million investment in Tara Mines has been slowly making its way to the Navan underground mine over the past week. The autogenous grinding mill (AG mill) arrived in Drogheda Port last week and has been transported in sections to Navan at night. The wide loads involved, constituting the sections of the mill, have been moved during the night with small sections of roads closed at a time to allow the convoy to progress. The new mill, which will increase the yield of the zinc and improve the work environment in the Navan mine, is part of a major investment by the Swedish owners, Boliden, who approved the new mill in 2007. According to Tara spokesman, John Kelly, the new mill will improve the viability of Tara Mines into the future by improving efficiency and reducing costs in the processing plant on the surface. 'The fact that the owners have decided to go ahead with this €27 million investment is a measure of their confidence in the future of the mine,' he said. The new technology will reduce the size of the ore and will replace the equipment and consumables currently used in grinding. Work commenced on the building and infrastructure for the new AG mill at Tara last summer, and has created many new jobs in construction since then. Parts of the mill itself have been arriving on-site over the past week from manufacturing sites in Bulgaria, Germany and Sweden. The largest parts are four sections of the shell of the mill, each measuring five metres wide by five metres high by nine metres long, and weighing 55 tonnes. These parts arrived in Drogheda Port from Bulgaria and were transported from Drogheda to Tara Mines by truck during the night because they are so large. The AG mill will be assembled during the summer, and is expected to be commissioned by the end of September. Many of the processing plant operators at Tara Mines have spent time in training on AG mills at Boliden"s mines in Sweden. The AG mill is expected to be fully operational in October this year. The decision to make the new investment came in 2006 when the then managing director, Bert-Ove Johansson, who had arrived at Tara a short time before, realised this new technology could be used in Navan and a 1,000 tonne sample from Tara was sent to Sweden for testing. Meanwhile, seven-day-working and a new shift system at Tara Mines, which was introduced earlier this year, is working well, according to Mr Kelly. Last January, workers voted to accept a cost-cutting package aimed at averting the closure of the site and the loss of nearly 700 jobs. Under the new system, the mine has moved from a five-and-a-half day to continuous seven-day operation on a four-shift cycle. The mine now operates every day, except 25th and 26th December. Tara Mines is Europe"s biggest zinc mine, producing around 200,000 tonnes of zinc and a further 40,000 tonnes of lead every year.