Gascyone's Dalgaranga could deliver more gold

PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Optimisation studies at the Dalgaranga gold project, in Western Australia, have indicated a production target larger than that identified by a 2015 scoping study, ASX-listed Gascoyne Resources said on Tuesday.

The scoping study estimated that the Dalgaranga project had the potential to support an 80 000 oz/y to 100 000 oz/y operation, with a mine life of about six years.

However, Gascoyne told shareholders this week that pit optimisation work, undertaken as part of a prefeasibility study (PFS), had identified that the project could sustain an average production rate of between 80 000 oz/y and 115 000 oz/y.

Based on a production rate of between two-million and three-million tonnes a year, the Dalgaranga project could deliver between 584 000 oz and 712 000 oz over its mine life of six to seven years.

Gascoyne noted that with larger production rates, compared with the 1.5-million tonnes a year considered in the scoping study, the operating costs and cutoff grades at the Dalgaranga project would decrease, which, in turn, would increase the amount of resource that fell within the optimised pit shell, and would increase the returns.

Independent mining consultancy CSA Global, which had undertaken the pit optimisation studies, estimated that a production rate of 2.5-million tonnes a year would be most appropriate for the project.

Meanwhile, Gascoyne was continuing with work on the PFS, which was scheduled for completion in the first quarter of this year. Work included process plant design, openpit mine design and scheduling, tailings storage studies and work on additional site infrastructure.