We are well under way with our summer excavation campaign. Each year during the summer period we remove enough raw Zeolite from the deposit and place into dry storage to ensure consistent moisture content is maintained through the wetter winter periods.
This is a very important part of our process as any rise in moisture content of the raw Zeolite has an adverse affect on drying efficiencies through our kiln at the main Tokoroa process facility.
This campaign is a little different to other years as we are increasing our stock holding capacity with the construction of a second storage shed on site which will increase our holding capacity from 3000m3 to 12000m3 of raw stock.
Part of this years’campaign, with a view to the future, is removing more of our over-burden to both expose new strategic volumes of zeolite and maximise drying from the natural elements as well as reinstating the bench structures of the face. This will enable BPM to selectively extract Zeolite from different areas of the deposit to suits the varying end applications and also optimise passive drying.