PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Processing operations at the Cadia gold mine, in New South Wales, have resumed over the Easter Weekend.
Newcrest progressively suspended operations at the Cadia East operations in March, following a limited breakthrough of tailings material at the northern tailings facility.
Mining operations at Cadia were restarted at the end of last week.
The gold major has now reported that tailings from the Cadia operation were being deposited into the southern tailings facility, with the processing facilities currently running at a rate of around eight-million tonnes a year, owing to limitations in infrastructure at the southern tailings facility.
Work was continuing on evaluating the cause of the northern tailings facility embankment slump, with a prohibition notice on depositing tailings in this facility remaining in place.
Meanwhile, mining from Panel Cave 1 is being conducted at a rate of 11-million tonnes a year, with test and response production from Panel Cave 2 starting over the weekend.
The gold miner expected to be at full mining rates within the coming weeks.
Furthermore, Newcrest is also progressing evaluation and readiness of the Cadia Hill openpit as a tailings facility. The company is progressing a permit to initially use the bottom 200 m of the now defunct Cadia Hill openpit for tailings storage and to use it in conjunction with the southern tailings facility to provide enough storage capacity to enable Cadia to return to full production.