PERTH (miningweekly.com) - Gold miner Silver Lake Resources has poured first gold at its Murchison mine, in Western Australia.
The project consists of multiple mines feeding a central 1.2-million-ton-a-year processing facility, and has a current resource of 20.5-million tons, at 2.9 g/t gold for 1.9-million ounces of gold.
“Our strategy since inception was to develop large production centers at Mount Monger and at the Murchison mine, with multiple mines at each center,” said Silver Lake’s MD Les Davis.
“We now have two production centers and three mills operating with an annualised capacity of 3.3-million tons, being fed from multiple ore sources.”
The base-case scenario would see the Murchison operation being fed from 14 openpit and four underground mines, at various stages of its eight-to-ten-year mine life.
“With the Murchison gold operations now in production, we have achieved another major milestone in our strategy. We look forward to progressively ramping-up production from the Murchison gold operation for the remainder of this financial year, then to some 100 000 oz/y in 2014,” Davis said.