Yellowhead Mining Inc. recently announced the awarding of the feasibility study for its Harper Creek project to Merit Consultants International Inc.
The feasibility study was kicked off on Wednesday, April 13 and is scheduled for completion by the end of November. The feasibility report will form a key component in making a production decision on the Harper Creek Project in 2012. Yellowhead's goal is to have the project in production by the end of 2014. The feasibility study will be based on the design criteria in a recently completed preliminary assessment report which involves processing 70,000 tonnes per day of mill feed and producing a copper concentrate containing an average of 132 million pounds copper per year plus gold and silver.
The feasibility team includes mill design and general engineering services, electrical, instrumentation, process control services, process flowsheet and design criteria, metallurgical testwork, mine design, and resource modeling. Merit will provide overall management and coordination of the consultants, schedule, capital costs, infrastructure, and implementation planning. Merit, a Vancouver-based firm, has extensive engineering, cost estimating and construction management experience with large copper projects in B.C. and internationally.
To be conducted in parallel with the feasibility study, Yellowhead has awarded management of the environmental assessment ("EA") and geotechnical/hydrological work to Knight Piésold Limited.
Yellowhead chief executive officer Ian Smith said, "We look forward to working with this very experienced team, who we believe are some of the top engineers and scientists internationally in their respective fields. We are confident they can deliver a first-class project in a timely manner".
Yellowhead's Harper Creek Project is a large copper-gold-silver project located approximately 20 kilometers southeast of Clearwater.