Red 5’s King of the Hills (KOTH) operation in Western Australia is on track for December quarter ramp-up despite some problems during the September period.
The company reported that the schedule had been impacted by COVID absenteeism, delaying progress towards higher-grade benches and production stopes.
Additional crews have been in place since August to enable the mining schedule to catch up by December 2022.
Following promising performance in July, unplanned downtime was also experienced in the processing plant, with mill shutdowns required in September to reconfigure the SAG mill to process an increasingly hard primary rock charge as ore feed.
Operations at the Darlot processing plant were completed in July, with Darlot ore now being trucked to the KOTH processing hub as part of the Darlot transition strategy.
During October, significantly improved stability has been seen in the KOTH processing plant, processing a consistent harder ore feed blend. Overall utilisation for October has averaged 90 per cent, with average mill throughput of 550 Tph (total petroleum hydrocarbons) for the month to date.
Quarterly gold production of 26,710 ounces was up on the June period of 18,586 oz, while gold sales of 30,005 oz were up from 16,587 oz.
Red 5 managing director, Mark Williams, said following the first gold pour in June and the successful delivery of the $226 million KOTH project, the main focus during the September quarter was to progress the ramp-up of all aspects of the new operation.
“At the start of October, we completed a capital raising to assist with working capital and to fund the next phase of our growth program, including a planned expansion of the KOTH processing plant to increase throughput capacity from the current 4.7mtpa nameplate to a targeted 5.5mtpa,” he said.
“Our global mineral resource base across the Eastern Goldfields — including the KOTH and Darlot mining operations and our satellite deposits — increased by 10 per cent to total 6.6moz of contained gold.”