Champion Iron shares rise on Bloom Lake expansion

Champion Iron (TSX:CIA) shares rose on Thursday after its Bloom Lake mine, in Quebec, reached its expanded nameplate capacity of 15 million tonnes a year in the last 30 days.

The company reported a quarterly production record of 3.45 million wet metric tonnes of high-grade 66.1% iron concentrate for the three months ended September, a 21% increase compared with the same quarter last year.

The record production was realized despite an unscheduled outage for several days related to a major crusher failure on one of the conveyor belts, affecting the availability of the Phase 2 concentrator.

The miner sold 2.9 million dry metric tonnes (dmt) of iron-ore concentrate in the quarter, up 12% from the previous quarter.

The company posted revenue of $387.6 million for the three-month period ended Sept. 30, and net income of $65.3 million.

At a cut-off grade of 15% iron, the 2023 resource and reserve estimate for Bloom Lake totals 1.25 billion tonnes with an average iron content of 28.7% in the measured and indicated categories, and inferred resources of 246.3 million tonnes with an average iron content of 26.6%.

The reserves for Bloom Lake are estimated at 716 million proven and probable tonnes at an average grade of 28.6% iron.

The life-of-mine average iron metallurgical recovery is 82%, with a plant feed grade of 28.6% iron and an average yearly production of 15.2 million wet metric tonnes of high purity iron ore concentrate at 66.2% iron.

Champion shares were up 5.6% to C$5.60 apiece at mid-day in Toronto on Thursday, valuing the company at C$2.93 billion ($2.12 billion).

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED ON MINING.COM