PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Iron-ore miner Mount Gibson on Monday lowered its full-year sales guidance from between 6.6-million and 7-million tonnes to between 6-million and 6.4-million tonnes following a change in schedule at its Koolan Island operations, in the Kimberley region, in order to resume production in the Main pit.
Last month, operations in the Main pit were temporarily suspended as a precautionary measure to allow the company to monitor and repair an area of instability in the upper part of the southern pit wall.
The miner said that the schedule change followed some further minor instability over the weekend, during repair works undertaken in the immediate area of the slip, which partially reduced the effectiveness of the constructed seawall.
An assessment of the instability identified that additional remedial actions would be required to complete repairs and enable production to resume safely.
The iron-ore miner said that the planned remedial work could take some three months to complete, and could cost between A$5-million and A$10-million. The remedial action was not expected to impact the long-term mine-life of the Koolan Island project.
Mining activities remain suspended within the Main pit as a precautionary measure, while operations outside of the Main pit continue as normal.
Meanwhile, Mount Gibson told shareholders that the company would use the intervening period to undertake further optimisation and productivity improvement work at Koolan Island.