PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Gold junior Silver Lake Resources has deferred the development of its Murchison underground mine, in Western Australia, by some 12 months, as it focused on reducing capital expediture across its business.
The miner noted that, owing to the current challenging gold price environment, the Murchison operation had been optimised to produce gold only from openpit operations during the 2014 financial year.
Initial ore from the Caustons underground mine had initially been expected in the September quarter of this year.
However, Silver Lake said that the underground development at Caustons would now cease, and would be placed on care and maintenance, in readiness for start-up at a later point.
The company also noted that the decision to delay the underground operation would result in some redundancies.
Meanwhile, supply feed to the mill would be maintained at 1.2-million tons a year during 2014, as Silver Lake continued to mine its multiple openpit operations, and sourced feed from historic stockpiles.
The Murchison operation produced its first gold in February this year. The project’s base-case scenario saw the Murchison operation being fed from 14 openpit and four underground mines, at various stages of its eight-to-ten-year mine life.