Kin pours first gold at Leonora

PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Junior Kin Mining has poured its first gold at its Leonora gold project, in Western Australia, as part of a trial mining programme at the Lewis deposit.

CEO Trevor Dixon said that this pour not only demonstrated the company’s ability to take a trial project from design, permitting and mine development through to the production of bullion, but also further de-risked the Leonora project.

“This is a major step forward on Kin’s path to commercial production. Albeit a smaller scale, the principles remain the same in terms of future development of the Leonora gold project,” he said.

Two gold pours have already been completed to date at the Lakewood toll milling facility, in Kalgoorlie. Some 15 000 t of ore was mined, trucked and toll milled in Kalgoorlie, with the last pour expected this week.

Kin in August announced that it would update the prefeasibility study on the Leonora gold project, completed by the project's previous owner in 2009. The company was planning to use historical data to develop an enhanced optimised mine plan that would see ore being delivered from mines at Mertondale, Cardinia, Tonto-Eclipse and Raeside to a centrally located standalone carbon-in-leach treatment plant.

The updated study will evaluate the establishment of either a standalone one-million-tonne-a-year processing plant or a standalone 600 000 t/y plant set up for future expansion to one-million tonnes a year.

Dixon noted that the trial mining at the Lewis deposit would assist in updating the feasibility study by allowing Kin to visually observe the structural controls on the mineralisation within the openpit, determine realistic modifying parameters to apply to move from resource to reserve, determine optimal geotechnical parameters, gain an understanding of soft oxide materials' handling through the mill, verify ore grades and total gold recovery, and to provide bulk samples for low-grade heap leaching work.