Sweden has a long and established mining culture and industry, dating back many hundreds of years. Amongst the lakes and forests are littered hundreds of old adits, shafts and excavations, some dating back over 500 years. So strong is the influence of this mining culture that many of today's mining equipment and methods can trace roots back to this small Scandinavian country.Whilst most people in the mining world have heard of the larger Swedish mines like LKAB's Kiruna and Malberget, and even New Boliden's Garpenberg or Lundin's Zinkgruvan; not many people have ever heard of Lovisagruvan.Lovisagruvan is a small narrow vein zinc/lead/silver mine located in lower central Sweden approximately 220 km inland from Stockholm. It was established in 1985 and has remained in operation ever since. What characterises Lovisa as opposed to the majority of other mechanised mining operations is the low annual tonnages that are produced and its ability to remain a small but viable producer in an otherwise productivity driven market.This paper will explore the mine's history, mining methods employed, and long-term production plans. An interesting but telling lesson in keeping things small, simple and straight forward._x000D_
*This is an abstract only. No full paper was prepared for this abstract.* CITATION:Bray, P, 2012. Lovisagruvan - small mine with a long future, in Proceedings Narrow Vein Mining 2012 , pp 29-30 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).