About Itasca

The Tara zinc mine in Ireland gets high marks from Itasca's staff, who has reviewed the rock mechanics work at the mine. They also give "thumbs up" for mining upwards, toward the ground surface!

Are the measurement methods the right ones? Is the support adequate? Do they follow "best practices" in the mining business?

The largest zinc mine in Europe - the Boliden Tara Mines outside of Dublin - is a mine with high safety. The mine gets good marks when Itasca, as an independent reviewer, have assessed safety conditions underground.

- The way the company handles the daily work, the rock mechanics work, in the large underground mine is good, says Ulf Lindfors. He has visited the mine several times to visit potential problem areas and collect data for their review work.

Itasca has also helped the company to study if it is possible to continue mining upwards in a particular area.

- When the orebody is to be mined upwards, it is important that this does not cause any disturbance on the ground surface. There is a river fairly close to the mining area, says Fredrik Perman, who is responsible for finding out how close to the ground surface that you can mine, how large portions can be extracted in each stage, and how large the rock pillars have to be.

- We have constructed a 3D-model of the entire mine and the results from our calculations are positive. There are good possibilities to continue mining upwards, says Fredrik Perman

In the Tara Mine, which has been in operation since 1977, the annual production is 2.6 million metric tons. The mine was acquired by Boliden in 2004.