Port of Townsville Limited confirms new Cloncurry based mining company CuDECO Limited has recently received Board Approval in Principal to lease port land for the establishment of a new mineral concentrate receival and export facility.

CuDECO are targeting commencing construction during 2010 with exports to commence mid to late 2011. Initial production tonnages are anticipated to be approximately 350,000 tonnes of mineral concentrates plus additional refined mineral products.

It is envisaged that these tonnages will increase as the mining operation matures.
CuDECO’s Construction/Logistics Engineer Mr John Green said “with further exploration and development of the mining lease, the amount of product is set to increase into the future”.

“This major development located 17km north west of Cloncurry will benefit the regions of Cloncurry and Townsville and see increased employment in these areas.

“We have been working very closely with Port of Townsville Limited officers for a number of months on securing land and developing logistics options to establish our receival and export facility,” Mr Green said.

Port of Townsville Limited Chief Executive Officer Mr Barry Holden has welcomed the announcement by CuDECO Limited.

“This project marks a significant step towards sustainable growth in trade, which in turn provides significant long term benefits to the regional, state and national economies.

“We look forward to developing a long term partnership with CuDECO for the benefit of both organisations and our associated stakeholders. This project further demonstrates the symbiotic relationship that exists between the North West Minerals Province and Port of Townsville Limited and the absolute necessity of a robust transportation network between the two,” Mr Holden said.

Background Information on CuDeco Limited:

CuDECO Ltd is an ASX 200 listed mining company that specialises in mineral exploration. In late 2005 the company purchased a mining tenement known as EPM 13049 which covers an area of some 2200 hectares. The EPM encompasses numerous old historical copper mines which have over the past 100 years produced exceptionally high grade copper ore and the company has been focusing on proving up this world class copper / Cobalt and Gold resource property which is now widely known around the globe as Rocklands.

In 2006 the company discovered a previously unknown zone of very high copper, cobalt and gold mineralisation which has a strike length today of over 1900 metres. This newly discovered high grade zone of mineralisation was named Las Minerale (Lost Minerals) In addition to the Las Minerale project the company has additional projects which are incorporated and located in the immediate area of Las Minerale combined with an aggregate length of Copper mineralisation of approx 10 kilometres . The combination of drilling and exploration of these zones of mineralisation is being drilled is to define and measured and indicated resource for the Rocklands Group Copper Project.

For full details of the project visit:  http://www.cudeco.com.au/index.asp