JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Gold miner Newcrest Mining is making progress with remedial and upgrade work at its Cadia East mine, where a seismic event in April halted operations, with the company on Wednesday starting a testing phase to resume normal operations from the mine’s Panel Cave 2 (PC2).
The New South Wales regulator placed Cadia East under a prohibition notice on April 14, prohibiting the extraction of ore in its PC1 and PC2. The notice has now been lifted, subject to the company complying with its remediation and restart plans that were submitted to the regulator.
The first phase of the $25-million Cadia East restart plan is to draw ore from each of the 165 drawbells in PC2. During this phase, Newcrest will monitor the cave response within the cave seismic monitoring system.
The test phase will take between two and four weeks, after which Newcrest will be in a position to confirm normal operations from PC2, the company reported in a statement.
At PC1, remediation and upgrade work is continuing on the extraction level and crusher chamber. This is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2018.
While work is under way to return to full production from PC1 and PC2, Newcrest is sourcing ore from the Ridgeway sublevel cave, which had been recommissioned and is producing 6 000 t/d. It is also continuing to process low-grade Cadia Hill stockpiles to feed the processing plant.
The miner expects Cadia to produce between 650 000 oz and 750 000 oz of gold in 2018.