The project will involve open-cut mining of gold reserves at the Kulumadau, Busai and Woodlark King deposits using multi-staged pit designs, with a stripping ratio of 3.9:1 over the life of the mine. Waste rock will be deposited in engineered waste rock dumps located adjacent to each pit.
Mining Plus was engaged to complete the mining components of the DFS, including optimisation, design and scheduling and preparation of a detailed operating and capital cost estimate to enable the generation of an Ore Reserve.
The study has shown that the three mining areas can be developed in a practical sequence to mine 1.1 Moz of gold and provide sufficient feed to the processing plant for 13 years.
The optimisation resulted in four discrete pits, two at Woodlark King and one each at Busai and Kulumadau.
Individual designs were completed for each discrete area of Busai and Kulumadau, plus a number of starter pits were designed to allow reduced pre-strip durations and the early access to high grades ore.
Mine Schedule.
The mine schedule was developed to ensure 2.4 Mtpa of ore is available to feed the processing plant once commissioned.
The initial pre-strip period is 9 months and involves the stripping of 5.5 Mt from Stage 1 and Stage 2 pits at Kulumadau and the build-up of 450,000 tonnes of ore on the stockpile at 1.45 g/t Au.
The planned mining rates are maintained below 10 Mtpa for the first three years ........
