Niuminco Group Limited announced that it has completed the funding and acquisition of a new 6 tonne JCB excavator and a second-hand Kawasaki wheel-loader. Transport to site is currently being arranged. These items of mobile equipment will greatly improve the efficiency of the mining operations by freeing up one of the existing larger excavators, and the efficiency of ore screening and loading the mill feed hopper. Additionally, the new excavator will give the operations a reliable piece of back-up mining equipment, which will be particularly useful and efficient in mining the narrower, higher grade veins. Following the repairs last month to both the ball mill discharge hopper pump and the ISP concentrator plant pump, which resulted in 18 days mill downtime, a decision has been made to purchase larger replacement pumps. Additionally, a second cyclone will also be purchased which, with the new pumps, is expected to improve the "back-end" performance of the processing circuit. Following the installation of the new vibrating feeder, the mill was test-run for 20 days or 88 hours (average 4.4hours/day) between 6 May and 30 June. During this period 374 tonnes of wet ore were processed, producing 751.1g of gold (24.2 ounces Au) and 728.7g of silver (23.4 ounces Ag) at an average grade of 2.01g/t Au. Sales for the quarter were AUD$40,495. On four (4) of those days, the mill ran for 7.5 to 8 hours per day at rates of 4.4 to 6.3tonnes/hour.