Quote:
Private venture re-establishes gold mining at Waikaia
Ross Louthean — 19 December 2012
A new private gold dredging operation is to be developed in northern Southland in the new year.
The Waikaia gold project has completed financing arrangements for what is projected to be a $12 million project.
This follows the granting of resource consents for mining in January this year.
The project’s executive director is well known Kiwi geologist Warren Batt who spent several years on gold and base metal operations in Australia.
Before returning to New Zealand he was the exploration chief for Perilya Ltd which ran gold operations in Western Australia and now is the major operator at the lead-zinc-silver operations at Broken Hill in western New South Wales.
While Batt was with Perilya the company ran the Island Block alluvial gold project near Roxburgh in partnership with contractor March Mining. Some of the old March Mining team are involved in the Waikaia project.
Batt said this week that development of Waikaia was expected to begin by the end of March after delivery of 2,700 tonnes of sheet pile which will be shipped into Bluff from Japan.
The sheet pile will be used to construct a groundwater cut-off wall around the mine site. Excavation of the mine “starter” pit would begin about six weeks later.
Construction of a gold recovery plant will start in January and the 250 tonne plant will be fabricated in kitset form in Nelson and Greymouth and transported to the mine site for assembly inside the completed “starter’ pit.
Commissioning of the gold recovery plant is anticipated during the third quarter of 2013.
Once full production is reached the plant will treat 700,000 cubic metres of gold bearing wash per annum. About 3 M cu m of overburden will be stripped ahead of the mine in the first year of mining operations.
Batt said the mine will advance at the rate of 20m per week with the overburden being replaced behind the mine.
The mined land will be progressively restored to pasture and full farm production.
Under the current mine plan 5 M cu m of gold bearing wash and 17 M cu m of overburden will be mined over the 7.5 year mine life producing about 106,000 oz of gold.
The Waikaia mine, owned by Waikaia Gold Ltd, will employ about 40 people and inject about $115 M per annum into the local economy before Crown royalties and taxes.
It is anticipated that the mine will be among the top 5 gold producers in NZ.
Warren Batt said the Waikaia district has a strong historical association with gold mining and the company was delighted it could make this announcement in the year of the 150th anniversary of the first discovery of gold in the district,.
By coincidence there will be gold mining anniversary celebrations in Waikaia from January 11-13.
GEL has a couple of spots at least, on the Waikaia, as well. I did a few numbers, the average grade for the above permit is about 0.65grams/m3 (similar to Drybread), and assuming they'd try a near 24/7 operation, it's just one (floating trommel?) plant processing about 80-100 m3 of ore per hour. They have to move a fair bit of low-grade gravel too, but it's not too bad.