PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The development of the Cascavel gold project, in Brazil, was progressing to schedule, with owner Orinoco Gold saying on Thursday that commissioning of the gravity plant was expected to start in March.
Mining of the trail stopes had been scheduled for April and ore from the areas would be batch-treated through the plant to provide information on recovery and reconciliation between the estimated grades and the actual recovered gold.
Processing of large samples ahead of the stoping would provide the most accurate estimates of the actual grades of each stope, the company told shareholders.
Meanwhile, despite heavy rainfall over the wet season, the plant crushing circuit is now fully installed, with the construction of the final stages of the plant completed, and commissioning taking place in March.
The initial commissioning ore would be low-grade ore stockpiled from development headings along with separate parcels of higher-grade material from the initial mining areas.
The high-grade material would be treated by batch, allowing for the development of reconciliation factors between the mine and the mill.
Once in production, Orinoco was hoping to increase production at Cascavel from the planned start-up rate of 40 000 t/y to more than 60 000 t/y by the December quarter.