The company recently presented at the 2013 NSW Mineral Exploration and Investment Conference and said Bowden’s technical feasibility, mine planning, infrastructure, and metallurgy reports were all aligned to submit with the environmental assessment in 2014.

The NSW Department of Planning and Infrastructure issued Director General’s Requirements for the project in February this year and Kingsgate has been working through the requirements in the lead up to the next submission.

At the conference Kingsgate said recent Land and Environment Court rulings were also being incorporated as part of the environmental assessment. 

It was also said community consultation would continue before and after the assessment submission.

The Bowden’s Silver project is proposed for a 610 hectare site north east of Lue. The site is bisected by Blackman’s Gully and Maloney Road, which would be relocated if the project went ahead. 

Around 70 per cent of the site would be occupied by the open cut mine, two waste rock emplacements, a processing plant and tailing storage. 

Previously Kingsgate have said Bowden’s would produce an estimated 46 million tonnes of silver, lead and zinc. 

In presenting to the conference, Kingsgate said the current resource estimate is 182 million ounces of silver with an in ground value of $5 billion. 

Resources are said to have increased by 40 per cent after in-fill and deeper drilling in 2012. The mine life is expected to be more than 10 years.

Kingsgate metallurgical testing shows 82 per cent silver recovery, a nine per cent increase over earlier work conducted before the company purchased the site for $75 million in 2011.

Metal is expected to be recovered by traditional concentrate methods and will include silver-lead and zinc-silver products.

Processing is expected to be based around a 4 million tonnes per annum conventional flotation plant initially producing 8-9 million ounces of silver.