TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Canadian miner Nevsun Resources is on track to start commissioning the new zinc plant currently under construction at its flagship Bisha operation, in Eritrea, by mid-2016.

The Vancouver-based firm on Wednesday reported that overall construction progress stood at 60%, with foundations and civil work complete and steel erection under way.

“We are confident that the robust flotation process plant will facilitate potential future throughput expansions and extended mine life. We have also been careful not to commit any of our zinc offtake so as to take advantage of the expected tightening of worldwide zinc supply,” Nevsun CEO Cliff Davis said.

Profit margins for zinc miners were expected to rise strongly over the next five years, boosted by expected price increases on the back of a widening supply deficit. The next two years, 2016 and 2017, represented a “pinch point” of concentrate supply, with mine-closure-related cuts expected to outweigh new project output.

The $92-million Bisha zinc expansion project would add zinc flotation capacity to the processing plant.

The mine produced low-cost gold/silver doré until mid-2013 when, through a $110-million copper expansion, throughput expanded to 2.4-million tonnes a year and the product switched to copper in concentrate.

This zinc flotation plant would float zinc concentrate after existing copper flotation, enabling the operation to produce both zinc and copper concentrate as required to process primary ores.

Nevsun reported that the project remained on schedule, with engineering design 89% complete, procurement 60% complete and site construction 21% complete as at March 31.

The company expected combined concentrate output would average about 300 000 t/y, not unlike 2014 output rates, which meant that the company would not require extra capital to transport concentrates to port, or to improve port infrastructure to export the concentrates from mid-2016 onwards.

The measured and indicated resources of TSX-listed Nevsun’s Bisha and Harena deposits had risen to 1.2-billion pounds of copper, 3.4-billion pounds of zinc, 750 000 oz of gold and 42-million ounces of silver, after completing a 2014 drilling programme.