Open pit mining by a mining contractor utilising a conventional drill and blast, load and haul operation.
In the FS, the Geko open pit is planned to be mined as a convenonal drill and blast, load and haul operation. The pit walls are assumed to apply convenonal baer and bench (catch berm) to a depth of ~140m to ~150m. Mining is to reflect a mining bench which is made up of two 2.5m flitches.
Total open pit mine life is 22 months.
October 31 2018, gold ore production has commenced at the Geko Project.
As announced on 17 December 2018, a revised three-stage mine plan for Geko was developed and executed to optimise future mining.
Stage One: Mining of high-grade supergene zone, completed 31 December 2018. The final physical results from Stage 1 were 7,980 tonnes at 5.94g/t Au containing gold of 1,524oz. In addition, 50,200 tonnes at 1.09g/t Au were stockpiled for future toll milling.
Stage two mining of the Geko project commenced in March quarter 2019. This Stage planned to mine 260,000 tonnes of ore at 2.23 g/t Au for total contained ounces 18,640 oz. The Stage envisaged completion of the internal West pit first and subject to its success, followed by the mining of the internal East pit. The West pit did not produce the tonnage and grade as predicted by the model due to mine dilution and underperformance of the oxide zone to enable sales to Northern Star Resources which required a minimum head grade of 2.75 g/t. ........
