Big River Zinc

BIG RIVER ZINC CORPORATION (BRZ) is an electrolytic zinc refinery located in Sauget, Illinois about 3 miles south east of downtown St Louis, Missouri. For over 60 years, the refinery produced zinc metal by treating zinc sulphide concentrate from local mines to produce approximately 100,000 tons per year of zinc metal. Due to the closure of the last of the local zinc mines, the smelting operations were suspended in February 2006.In May 2006, ZincOx Resources plc purchased BRZ for US$14 million. Ultimately, the plant will be used for the production of zinc metal. Initially, however the site will be used to wash the impure concentrates produced by the recycling business to remove the chlorides and fluorides to enable the sale of zinc concentrates to third parties.ZincOx has been planning for over two years its redevelopment of the Big River Zinc facilities to treat EAFD. Initially, ZincOx planned to treat such EAFD by redeveloping Big River Zinc through the construction of a new leach and purification plant using solvent extraction. ZincOx's management team were confident of this technology due to their experience at the Skorpion Project in Namibia, where Tecnicas Reunidas SA were critically involved in the success of the project. Tecnicas Reunidas is a world leader in zinc solvent extraction technologies and provided and licensed the zinc solvent extraction process now in full-scale operation at Skorpion. At the current time, ZincOx does not intend to use the solvent extraction process for its project in Big River.BRZ is currently on care and maintenance while ZincOx carries out design and engineering work for the treatment at BRZ of the zinc bearing concentrate to be produced at the Ohio and Aliaga Recycling Projects.