Orinoco ships first gold from Cascavel

PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Gold miner Orinoco Gold has shipped its first gold parcel from the Cascavel mine, in Brazil, for refining and sale, marking another milestone in the project’s ramp-up to commercial production.

“The first gold shipment, comprising gold produced from stockpiled development material, marks another significant and exciting milestone in the development of the Cascavel mine and the Faina greenstone belt as a new gold district in Brazil,” said Orinoco MD Mark Papendieck on Friday.

“With processing of production ore set to begin during this month, we expect to see a steady increase in the amount of gold recovered over the coming months. We are also switching shortly to a site-based assay laboratory, which should give us greatly enhanced capability in terms of our ability to measure the performance of the plant and fine-tune its performance.”

As planned, some 7 000 t of development material was processed during August and September, with the circuit now running at its nameplate capacity of 15 t/h, with plant availability approaching the target rate of around 85%.

So far, mineralised development material processed during the commissioning phase has resulted in the production of around 8 kg of bullion, making up the first shipment. Further gold is contained in residue and tailings that is expected to be recovered in the future.

Meanwhile, the ramp-up of production is continuing in the mine, with production material being delivered to the plant for processing, concurrently with ongoing development material.

With development focused on the higher-grade Southern areas of the mine, the majority of production stoping to be undertaken in October will be from the lower-grade Northern areas of the mine, where there are no scheduling conflicts between development and production.