Small things bright and beautiful

In Austria, a bijou of a mine is being developed to meet demand for a high value product. Bruce McMichael went to visit.

Across the Rio Tinto Group the focus is frequently on massive million tonne operations, delivering the mega quantities of everyday minerals that the world demands. But there are exceptions at the other end of the scale – and one such boutique operation is in Austria where, in a secluded, heavily wooded valley, a brand new operation known as Kleinfeistritz is taking shape. It will lay claim to be the Group’s smallest mine for a long while, as production should last up to 60 years.

There have been very few mines opened up in Europe in the past three decades or so, but the activity here has been triggered by a very special mineral, leucophyllite – a natural coalescence of mica, chlorite and quartz. Silvery to the eye and slippery to the touch, leucophyllite is processed into a high value filler and additive used in coatings, paints, putties and adhesives. It has been profitably extracted from gneiss rich rocks of the Kleinfeistritz drift mine for over 90 years, and the new mine is a few hundred yards away down the valley.

Operated by the Austrian based Naintsch Mineralwerke (part of Rio Tinto’s talc business), the mines are located in the southern province of Styria, a rural area of rolling hills famed for pumpkin seed oil and fine wines.

Ore is processed 10km away at Weisskirchen, a quiet village with a population of 2,500 people dominated by the Naintsch processing plant, about 100km north west of Graz, Austria’s second city and a thriving cultural centre. The plant processes around 45,000 tonnes of leucophyllite and talc ore a year from Kleinfeistritz, sister operations in Austria, France, and from third party suppliers.