JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – TSX- and Aim-listed Aureus Mining on Wednesday revealed that gold production at its New Liberty gold mine exceeded 9 000 oz during February 2016, bringing year-to-date levels to 14 000 oz.
With the Liberia-based mine’s process plant performance now in line with original design specifications, and management expectations and gold recovery levels up to 90%, the West African gold producer officially declared commercial production, effective March 1.
“Over the past 60 days of operations the process plant has achieved an average of 88% of design throughput capacity. During February 2016, plant throughput totalled 90 099 t of ore milled, resulting in the recovery of over 9 000 oz of gold, with operating recovery levels of 90% achieved by the end of February,” explained Aureus CEO and president David Reading.
Following the declaration of commercial production, Aureus aimed to continue fine tuning the process plant to further improve its overall operational performance.
“Mining operations at New Liberty continue to progress, with run-of-mine stockpiles currently standing at 70 844 t of fresh ore at a grade of 2.59 g/t, and oxide and transitional stockpiles standing at 81 881 t at a grade of 1.32 g/t,” he noted.
The company was in the process of finalising an updated mine plan for the project, while New Liberty’s mining fleet provider MonuRent acquired five new 100-t-capacity Komatsu HD785 rigid haul trucks, with one PC1250 excavator that would be delivered and mobilised by April.
Edited by: Creamer Media Reporter
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