PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Gold miner Newmont Mining will reach a decision on the possible expansion of its Tanami operation later this year.
Newmont’s Asia Pacific leader Tom Palmer told the WA Mining Club this week that the company’s Full Potential programme had seen a 22% increase in production at Tanami, and reduced the project’s cost base by some 21% over the last 18 months.
One focus point of the Full Potential programme at Tanami looked at improving the way the company managed its mine control centre and establishing a system to ‘hot seat’ the trucks at crib time. By doing this, Newmont reduced the average truck cycle time by 10%.
This work also reduced variations and increased the payload from 55 t a load to 60 t a load, Palmer said, which resulted in a 6% productivity improvement with no capital costs.
He noted that the potential expansion of Tanami would involve building a second decline in the mine and incremental capacity in the plant to increase production and extend the mine life.
“The expansion could add incremental gold production of between 100 000 oz/y and 125 000 oz/y at lower overall costs for the first five years,” Palmer said.
If approved, Newmont was expecting production and cost improvements as early as 2017.