New concentrators produced their first saleable material between April and early August 2026, while operating plants pursued higher recovery, finer regrinding and better tailings handling. Government programs also placed more money behind the separation and refining stages that turn mined material into usable products.
Mineral processing projects moved from drawings into operating circuits across several commodities during the past four months. Copper and polymetallic concentrators reached commissioning milestones in Canada, Greenland and southern Africa. Existing operations installed equipment intended to recover metal that had been leaving in tailings. Work on critical minerals extended beyond mine sites into cobalt sulfate, antimony, gallium, germanium and rare earth separation. The range of projects shows how much value now depends on the plant between the mine and the market.
New plants begin producing concentrate
McIlvenna Bay, Saskatchewan. The project produced its first copper concentrate on June 7 after wet commissioning of the processing plant. Eldorado Gold acquired the project through its purchase of Foran Mining earlier in 2026. Hot commissioning began as the operation worked toward its 4,900-tonne-per-day nameplate rate. The company expected commercial production during the third quarter. McIlvenna Bay is designed to produce separate copper and zinc concentrates from a volcanogenic massive sulphide deposit, bringing a new processing operation into Saskatchewan's Flin Flon mining district. CIM Magazine reported the commissioning milestone on June 9.
Nalunaq, Greenland. The operation added flotation to a plant that had been recovering gold through gravity concentration. Amaroq completed commissioning in June and reported its first bagged gold concentrate. The company expects gravity and flotation together to raise overall recovery from the earlier range of 50 to 70 percent to about 90 to 95 percent. Tailings grading around 6 grams per tonne from the gravity-only phase are due to return to the circuit for additional recovery. The improvement will have to be confirmed through sustained operating data as throughput and ore characteristics change. Amaroq published the flotation commissioning results on June 11.
Platreef, South Africa. Ivanhoe Mines continued the ramp-up of the Phase 1 concentrator. The plant processed lower-grade development ore during the first quarter while the mine completed Shaft 3. The new shaft increased hoisting capacity to about 5 million tonnes per year and allowed production ore to begin replacing development material. Ground was also broken in April for a 3.3-million-tonne-per-year Phase 2 concentrator. Ivanhoe shifted its expected commercial production date for Phase 1 to the fourth quarter after identifying bottlenecks in materials handling and the plant. That change is a reminder that first concentrate marks the beginning of plant tuning. Ivanhoe provided details in its April production report and May operating update.
Reliquias, Peru. The plant entered commissioning after rehabilitation work across crushing, grinding, flotation, filtration and tailings systems. Silver Mountain Resources plans to restart the silver-polymetallic operation during the third quarter. Electrical checks, instrumentation tests and mechanical integration were still underway in July. The project will provide a useful test of whether an existing mill can return to service on its stated schedule after a broad refurbishment. Silver Mountain described the commissioning work in its July project update.
Radersburg, Montana. United States Antimony began wet commissioning of the flotation mill on July 7. The circuit is intended to upgrade antimony-bearing material into concentrate for downstream smelting. The company announced the start of wet commissioning through Newswire.
Delta, Utah. Ares Strategic Mining started commissioning a plant for metallurgical-grade fluorspar lumps later that month. The facility has modest scale beside a copper concentrator, yet its product feeds a supply chain with limited Western processing capacity. Ares announced the start of commissioning on July 21.
Recovery projects focus on material already mined
Kamoa-Kakula Project 95, Democratic Republic of the Congo. The upgrades offer one of the clearest examples of a brownfield recovery project. Ivanhoe completed commissioning in June on modifications to the Phase 1 and Phase 2 concentrators. The circuits regrind and refloat underflow from the tailings thickener. Ivanhoe designed the work to lift copper recovery toward 95 percent from an original design value of 87 percent. Performance from the third quarter onward will show how closely the operating result approaches that target. Ivanhoe confirmed completion in its July production update.
The engineering principle carries wider significance. A recovery increase can create more payable metal from the same mined tonnes. Its value depends on liberation, residence time, reagent response and the energy needed for regrinding. Every orebody sets its own limit, so a published improvement at one plant cannot be transferred directly to another flowsheet.
Haib, Namibia. Koryx Copper's work examined an earlier point in the circuit. The company is evaluating coarse-particle flotation as a way to reject up to 25 percent of run-of-mine feed as coarse tailings with limited copper loss. Successful rejection would reduce the mass sent through energy-intensive fine grinding. The proposed flowsheet still uses conventional crushing, milling and sulphide flotation, with possible heap leaching for oxide material. Pilot work and variability testing will determine whether the rejection estimate holds across the deposit. Koryx outlined the flowsheet work on June 3.
HIGmill and Concorde Cell. Fine-particle recovery remains the other side of the liberation problem. Metso has promoted an integrated arrangement pairing HIGmill fine grinding with Concorde Cell high-intensity flotation. The concept targets particles that conventional flotation can struggle to recover after ultrafine grinding. As a supplier proposal, it needs support from ore-specific testwork and operating results. Its appearance alongside coarse rejection projects shows that plants are dividing feed into streams suited to different treatment intensities. Metso explained the proposed combination in a May technical article.
Grinding and beneficiation orders point to new capacity
BHQ beneficiation project, South Asia. FLS received an order worth about DKK 300 million for a banded hematite quartzite iron ore project. The package includes a large high-pressure grinding roll, nine stirred-media mills, hydrocyclones, flotation cells, thickeners, filtered-tailings equipment and process control. Commissioning is scheduled across 2027 and 2028. BHQ ores require substantial grinding and upgrading, which makes the choice of high-pressure and stirred milling relevant to both energy use and final concentrate quality. FLS announced the equipment package on May 5.
Metso Minerals orders. Second-quarter orders rose 24 percent from a year earlier, with equipment orders up 50 percent. The company cited demand for grinding and crushing equipment. Order intake is an imperfect measure of future construction because timing and project scope can change. It still gives a current view of capital flowing toward comminution and beneficiation equipment. The figures appear in Metso's half-year report.
Dingo Range and Memot. Emerald Resources selected 8-megawatt semi-autogenous grinding mills for the gold projects in Western Australia and Cambodia. Each installation includes a hydraulic support bearing and mill lining systems. The orders were valued at more than €10 million in total, with the projects moving through their respective development programs. Metso announced the two orders on May 21.
Tailings equipment moves closer to the centre of plant design
Tuvatu, Fiji. Tailings work appeared as an integral part of several processing announcements. The large FLS beneficiation package includes what the supplier describes as its largest filtered-tailings system. At Tuvatu, Lion One Metals began a staged mill expansion with two additional filter presses, a filter-feed tank, pumps and another tailings truck. The first phase is intended to lift plant capacity from 300 to 400 tonnes per day while expanding the filtered-tailings system. Lion One announced the work on July 21.
Filtered tailings can recover process water and produce material that is easier to place in a compact stack. Filtration adds power demand, maintenance and cloth-management requirements. Ore mineralogy and particle-size distribution influence achievable moisture. Projects therefore need the filtration circuit sized around real tailings behaviour rather than a generic water target.
Thickening and dewatering upgrades also affect the stability of the main circuit. Silver Mountain's Reliquias rehabilitation includes filtration and tailings facilities alongside the grinding and flotation equipment. Ivanhoe's recovery project treats thickener underflow as a secondary feed stream. These examples connect water recovery, metal recovery and plant availability within the same operating system.
Processing policy reaches beyond concentrate production
Temiskaming Shores and Trail, Canada. Canada committed $20 million in May to support Electra Battery Materials' $99.4-million plan for its Temiskaming Shores refinery in Ontario. The project would repurpose and expand the facility to make battery-grade cobalt sulfate. The federal announcement describes the investment and planned product. In July, the federal government announced a framework supporting Teck's Trail Operations in British Columbia. Teck's potential investment of up to $850 million could double existing germanium and antimony capacity and add gallium production. The Canada Growth Fund may invest up to $400 million under the agreement. Natural Resources Canada published the framework on July 7.
United States critical-material programs. The Department of Energy opened a funding opportunity of up to $69 million in April for critical-material production and refining technologies. Eligible work includes rare earth production, gallium and germanium refining, and direct lithium extraction with downstream separation. DOE followed in July with selections totalling $75 million for five pilot-scale projects designed to recover rare earths and other products from coal and coal-based feedstocks. Those selections remain subject to award negotiations.
ANSTO processing facilities, Australia. Australia opened new research facilities at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation in May. One facility will support processing work on clay-hosted rare earth deposits. Another uses high-temperature chlorination to produce high-purity quartz for semiconductor and other technical markets. Australia's Department of Industry described the new facilities on May 8. The country is also developing the rules for a refundable tax offset covering eligible critical-mineral processing expenditure from July 2027.
These programs place separation chemistry, product purity and residue management inside industrial policy. Building a mine does not create an independent supply chain when the concentrate still travels abroad for conversion. Refinery commissioning, customer qualification and stable product quality will decide how much of the announced capacity becomes dependable supply.
What plant operators should watch through the rest of 2026
The next operating reports should provide recovery and throughput data from Kamoa-Kakula's Project 95 circuits. McIlvenna Bay will be working through ramp-up toward commercial production. Platreef must resolve its materials-handling and processing bottlenecks before the revised fourth-quarter target. Nalunaq will generate the first sustained comparison between its gravity-only performance and the combined gravity-flotation circuit.
Coarse-particle rejection at Haib still sits in the testwork and design phase. Results from representative ore domains will matter more than a single average rejection estimate. Filter-press expansions at Tuvatu and commissioning work at Reliquias will add practical evidence on water recovery and plant availability. Funding announcements for critical-mineral refining will move into engineering, contracting and award negotiations, where schedules and costs become clearer.