Name: Florida Canyon mine.
Location: The Florida Canyon mine is located halfway between Lovelock and Winnemucca, in the US state of Nevada.
Mine Owner/s: Florida Canyon Mining, a wholly owned subsidiary of Alio Gold.
Brief History: The Florida Canyon property had been in continuous production since 1986. The mine operated from 1986 to 2004, and from 2007 to 2011, recovering more than 2.3-million ounces of gold.
Following a rehabilitation period, the mine restarted production in April 2017 and achieved commercial production in December 2017.
Alio Gold acquired Rye Patch Gold Corp and all its related assets, including the Florida Canyon Mine, in May 2018.
Brief Description: Florida Canyon is an operating openpit and heap-leach gold recovery mining operation. Ore is sourced from five primary areas – Main, Central, Central North, Jasperoid Hill and Radio Towers.
Primary metals: Gold.
Secondary metals: Silver.
Geology/Mineralisation: Florida Canyon is a large tonnage, low-grade gold deposit hosted in Mesozoic-age metasedimentary rocks (Triassic-Cretaceous) controlled by a north-east-trending fault-fracture system typical to north-central Nevada, and partially controlled and bounded by north-trending basin-and-range mountain front faults along the north-west edge of the Humboldt range. Florida Canyon is adjacent to an active geothermal system and is generally described as a hot spring-style, low-sulphidation epithermal gold deposit. A large area of faulting and fracturing in host mudstones and siltstones has been hydrothermally altered to exhibit oxidation (hematite) and silicification, along with associated fracture and disseminated gold mineralisation. Sulphide mineralisation exists below the level of oxidation.
Reserves: Total proven and probable oxide reserves as at November 1, 2018, were estimated at 94.63-million grading 0.11 g/t gold.
Resources: Total measured and indicated oxide resources as at November 30, 2018, were estimated at 146.47-million tonnes grading 0.012 g/t gold.
Mining Method: Florida Canyon uses a standard openpit mining method, with conventional drilling and blasting to liberate ore and waste. Inferred resources were estimated at 1.55-million tonnes grading 0.014 g/t gold.
Major Infrastructure and Equipment: The Florida Canyon mine has well-established project infrastructure. Existing infrastructure includes power, water, maintenance facilities, a lab, an office, gold-processing and r-efining plants. Other existing infrastructure includes openpits, waste-rock repositories, heap-leach pads, ponds and roads.
Prospects: Work continues to evaluate numerous opportunities to increase production and reduce costs at the mine from historical levels. Areas of primary focus are improving mining and mine fleet efficiency, mine planning functions that are expected to result in more efficient mining practices and grade optimisation, the exploitation of low strip-ratio ore, increased ore in process using improved efficiency in crushing and the possible inclusion of run-of-mine ore to the heap-leach pad.
Contact Details:
Alio Gold
Tel +1 604 682 4002
Email info@aliogold.com
Website https://www.aliogold.com