Lead and Zinc in NSW

Lead and zinc often occur together in mineral deposits. Lead is mostly used in batteries for vehicles which accounts for 80% of modern lead usage. The remaining 20% of uses include underwater cable sheathing, solder, casting alloys, chemical compounds, ammunition, glassware and radiation protection. There is strong demand for these commodities.

Zinc is widely used in the construction, transport and appliance manufacturing industries as an anti-corrosion on steel with around four million tonnes, or more than half of the world's total zinc consumption used annually in steel coating, or galvanising. Zinc is used also in brass and bronze production as well as in pigments, as oxide additives to rubber and in agricultural chemicals.

NSW has significant resources of lead and zinc, and is a major world producer. Excellent opportunities exist for the discovery of major new deposits and for the development of existing resources.

Investment opportunities

Fact sheet

Read about Lead and Zinc [2.29 MB] mineralogy and prospectivity in NSW.

Exploration

• Kempfield Project is located just 41 km from Cadia and is the flagship project of Argent Minerals Limited. It has been reported that the project has substantial mineral resources of 21.8 million tonnes (and 52 million ounces of silver equivalent contained metal) that was upgraded to JORC 2012 standard in May 2014.

• Balamara Resources Limited's main asset at Peelwood is the Peelwood North deposit. The deposit is at Peelwood located approximately 50 km north of Crookwell and 75 km south of Bathurst, NSW. The company announced that metallurgical recovery test work exceeded expected recoveries and would result in higher metal production at no additional cost and the metallurgical test work also confirmed that saleable concentrates were achievable.

• Elysium Resources Limited holds an exploration licence located at Burraga, NSW, approximately 60 km south of Bathurst, 50 km south west of Oberon and 60 km south east of Blayney. The company is primarily targeting the old Lloyds Mine and two nearby
  'look-a-likes'. A scoping study commissioned by the company assessed the commercial potential of reprocessing the tailings, slag and minor hard rock resources from the surface of Lloyds Mine, and concludes that such a project, subject to further testing and financial investigation, is financially and commercially viable.

• Impact Mineral Limited, the owner of the Commonwealth Project, is confident with the potential for small-scale early production.Just 95 km north of Orange, the project area covers around 8 km² and is situated within the prolific Lachlan Fold Belt. The project area is centred on the dormant Commonwealth gold-silver-base metal mine. The company has gained very high grade true width underground drill results from the deposit.

• Kidman Resources Limited is actively evaluating Browns Reef Project, located close to the township of Lake Cargelligo in central NSW. The project contains the Browns Reef base metal (Lead-Zinc-Copper-Silver-Gold) deposit and several other surrounding exploration licences covering >80 km of strike length of the under-explored Browns Reef trend.

• Silver City Minerals Limited controls 1,170 km² of exploration tenure in western NSW. The tenure largely surrounds the world-class 'supergiant' lead-zinc-silver deposit of Broken Hill with most of the ground lying within a 50 km radius of the deposit.

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