Post by
nozzpack on Oct 09, 2024 1:44pm
Tailings Contribution in 2025
TSF2 is rather modest in terms of historical use.
It is being repositioned to recover gold fines from Shorelines aggregate operations whose crushed waste ore must be washed in the polishing pond first.
The gravity circuit will be fully installed by late this year for recovery of fines from Aggregates wash plant.
Shoreline normally processes about 1 million tons of waste rock including waste ore per year.
I don't know it's current stockpile .
Typically, a grade of 0.5 grams per ton is the cutoff grade for waste ore..ie ore with grades less than 0.5 grams will be considered waste ore and available to Shoreline.
Assuming 500,000 tons of waste ore per year, simple calculations suggest that about 8000-9000 ounces of gold fines will be recovered .
These require little or no processing, so the profit margins will be very high...above 80% .
That is to say, 8000 ounces of wash fines will yield the same operating profit as 13,000 ounces of mined gold.
TSF1 contains the inert tailings from historical production of 145,000 ounces.
Recoveries averaged about 83% , so TSF1 tailings pond would contain over 20,000 ounces of gold fines.
Reclamation of TSF1 tailings will begin in early 2025 as a Joint Venture with Shoreline
I assume that the contained gold fines will be recovered as part of the reclamation process beneficiating into purified soil.
So, there will be signifucant additional contribution of recovered gold fines in 2025.
Its difficult to estimate 2025 recovery volumes at this early stage but perhaps 10,000 ounces might be reasonable estimate at this stage.
In summary, additional sources of gold production beyond current stockpiles and early test mining of HD might be a reasonable expectation.
AIMHO