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“2018 was a strong year all round for OZ Minerals. Operationally this marks the fourth year we have met or exceeded copper guidance at Prominent Hill. From a growth perspective, we marked several milestones towards achieving our strategy of becoming a global copper focused miner. The Carrapateena project is now in peak construction, the West Musgrave project is in Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS) and a platform for growth has been established in the world class Carajás and Gurupi mineral provinces in Brazil.
“Prominent Hill exceeded both its copper and gold annual production guidance for 2018 with costs below the guided range, again demonstrating a reliable and consistent delivery to the mine plan.
“The Carrapateena project continued to progress both above ground, with the village and airstrip completed and processing plant and non-process infrastructure in construction, and underground, with almost 10,000 metres of development completed at a vertical depth beyond 500 metres.
“We achieved 51% ownership of the West Musgrave Project and the PFS continued to advance, with infill drilling and exploration taking place concurrently to increase our confidence in the resource and develop optionality for the province.
“We increased our ore body knowledge of the Brazilian assets as we progressed optimisation plans in both the Carajás and Gurupi provinces. In the Carajás, we are nearing completion of the Antas resource update which will support a new mine plan, the Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) is progressing well at Pedra Branca and drilling at Pantera has returned high grade copper-gold intersections. At CentroGold in the Gurupi province, we continued our community engagement program ahead of the lifting of the injunction along with further drilling to inform the PFS.
“During the year we grew our exploration pipeline through new joint ventures including projects in East Musgrave, Sweden and Peru, as well as a number of highly prospective opportunities in Brazil. Expansion studies are well underway as part of our life of province planning at Carrapateena and we launched the Mt Woods crowd sourcing exploration challenge for the Prominent Hill Province.
“Net revenue in excess of $1.1 billion (unaudited) for 2018 was generated and our cash balance is at $505 million after investment in growth projects during the year.
“Looking ahead in 2019 we remain focused on developing our Modern Mining culture which is fundamental to how we will continue to deliver value for our stakeholders.
“Operationally at Prominent Hill, this year is about safely achieving the ramp up of the underground to 3.7 – 4.0Mt. We will be advancing the underground expansion studies with drilling to commence in Q1 and completion of the haulage study in Q3, whist integrating the outcomes of the Mt Woods exploration challenge. A gold processing trial is also planned for the first half of 2019 to assess recoveries and mill throughput, with a view to bringing forward the processing of the regular grade gold stockpile in place of the low grade copper stockpile from 2020.
“At Carrapateena, construction and operational efforts are geared towards achieving operational readiness and safe commissioning in Q4. A separate team is finalising the Scoping Study for the expansion of the Carrapateena Province with an update expected in late Q1.
“At West Musgrave, we are working with our joint venture partners, Cassini Resources, and a range of external stakeholders to further consider how we can develop an innovative mining province to create value for all stakeholders whilst completing the PFS and drilling programs across the province.
“In Brazil, we will be optimising and prioritising development projects in the Carajás and Gurupi provinces and expanding our exploration program to leverage the significant growth opportunities across these regions.
“We have a healthy number of exploration projects in our pipeline that will evolve through the year and will continue to seek opportunities in priority mineralised belts to maintain future optionality. Our disciplined capital management approach will be applied to prioritise and focus our efforts.
“We remain confident in the long-term demand for copper from both traditional construction and infrastructure sources and increasingly from the rapidly developing global carbon reduction industry.”