TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – TSX-listed High River Gold has managed to reduce the vibration to acceptable levels in the electric motor and gearbox at its Taparko mill, in Burkina Faso, but will need to take further action to tackle high levels of vibration in the pinion and bull gears, the firm said on Monday.

The company has already shut down the mill twice, most recently from January 10 to 21, for remedial action to resolve vibration problems on the mill drive train.

High River has hired a specialised mill consultant, who has recommended that a wear compound be applied to the pinion and bull gears to improve the meshing of the gears, which should reduce vibration to acceptable levels, the firm said.

This treatment is currently scheduled for early February.

The company also said that it does not believe that the original design capacity of the mill – of one-million tons a year – is attainable, and that it expects throughput to be around 800 000 t/y going forward.

The company also continues to experience problems at its Berezitovy mine and mill, in Russia, where throughput and recoveries at the mill have been affected by too coarse a grind from the mill and mining in the pit encompassing the old underground workings which resulted in fragments of the old timbers entering the process plant.

Further, the disc filter plant has continued to perform poorly, despite the new filter cloth, and a permanent solution needs to be implemented, High River reported on Monday.

“The company continues to undertake remedial actions to correct these problems,” it said.

However, to add to its woes, the ball mill was shut down on January 28, due to damage to the clutch disks.

The date of the restart of the mill will depend on the availability and timing of the arrival of appropriate spare parts.