Yukon-Nevada Gold Corp. (TSX:T.YNG, Stock Forum)said that two conveyors have been successfully installed to replace a problematic bucket elevator at its gold processing facility in Nevada.
The wholly-owned Jerritt Canyon gold processing facility in Elko County is operated by a subsidiary, Queenstake Resources USA Ltd.
According to a press release, in July, a bucket elevator in the fine crushing unit was replaced with two conventional belt conveyors.
The bucket elevator had been installed during the January 2012 shutdown, but caused significant plant downtime and could not reach design specifications due to persistent mechanical failure.
The new conveyors were sourced from equipment inventory already at the site which significantly reduced costs. The conveyor installation was completed on July 11, 2012 and they have operated without a problem since that time.
The conveyors have allowed crushing to operate at substantially over 300 tons per hour, well in excess of the current 220 tons per hour capacity of the ore roasters.
The operation produced and shipped 10,964 ounces of gold in July. This was achieved despite lower production throughput in the first eleven days of the month while a bypass screen and crushing plant operated during the switch-out of the bucket elevator to the new conveyors.
The moderate under-performance of the temporary bypass crusher was due to equipment over-heating while running a full capacity.
Yukon-Nevada is a North American gold producer in the business of discovering, developing and operating gold deposits.
On Thursday morning, Yukon-Nevada was trading at $0.295 a share. The company has a market cap of $294 million, based on 997 million shares outstanding. The 52-week high and low was $0.51 and $0.23 respectively.