Wolf Minerals’ (ASX:WLF, LON:WLFE) Hemerdon tungsten and tin development in Devon has received permission to trial seven–day, 24 hours working at the site’s crushing plant.
Devon County Council has granted Wolf a six month temporary permit to see if it can run at weekends and at night within noise control regulations.
Russell Clark, Wolf's managing director, said he recognised the change came with a responsibility to continue to meet the environmental conditions regarding noise specifically.
"We are particularly appreciative of the local community for trusting us to fulfil our obligations. We aim to demonstrate that we can do just that."
Situated on the Hemerdon site, Drakelands is six miles from Plymouth and scheduled for commissioning in August. It will be the first new mine to open in the UK for almost forty years.
Previously the primary crusher was restricted to running for only five and a half days a week. The trial will commence when ore crushing starts and will enable Wolf to ramp up production without weekly interruptions.
If the trial is successful, Wolf will apply to make the change permanent.
Clark added: "This is welcome news. Commissioning is always challenging and it will be considerably easier if we don't need to schedule downtime every weekend for a day and a half.
“The processing plant will run far more efficiently working steady state and we can schedule maintenance periods when we need them rather than when the plant has been turned off as part of a planning permission requirement."
“We remain on schedule for handover of the plant in August 2015, and remain fully funded through to positive cash flow.
“This is a very exciting stage in the project's development and we recognise the valuable support from DCC and the community in making this a successful start-up."
Proactive Investors Australia is the market leader in producing news, articles and research reports on ASX emerging companies with distribution in Australia, UK, North America and Hong Kong / China.