PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The board of gold miner Silver Lake Resources have approved the Deflector South West access, development and production that will underpin a longer life and a higher margin operation at the Deflector project, in Western Australia.
The Deflector South West lodes are adjacent to the existing underground mine and have a higher gold and copper tenor, accounting for some 35% of the Deflector ore reserve and 30% of the mineral resource.
Silver Lake on Wednesday said that surface work in preparation for decline access is planned to start in October, and development is expected to start by the end of the second quarter of the next financial year.
Development ore from the upper levels of the Deflector South West lodes will contribute to plant feed from the first quarter of 2022, with stoping to start in the second half of that year.
Silver Lake is expected to spend some A$12-million on the Deflector South West lode access in 2021.
The miner told shareholders that introducing an additional high grade mining front at Deflector, and the addition of Rothsay high-grade ore to the available mill feed, would provide a level of operating flexibility that the Deflector operation has not previously enjoyed, allowing Silver Lake to optimise the mill feed grade from 2022.
The company added that defining further extensions to the South West lodes and potential Deflector repeats within the prospective untested basalt host stratigraphy remained one of the highest priority exploration targets for Silver Lake.