The Albazino deposit consists of several seemingly isolated northwest-trending mineralisation zones separated by fatult-bounded structural blocks. Mineralisation extends over 7 km in length with the Anfisa, Olga, Ekaterina and Farida zones in the northeast, and Nadezhda in the northwest.

Gold mineralisation at Albazino is of the low-sulphide, gold-pyrite-arsenopyrite type, and is assicated with moderately dipping dykes that crosscut sandstrones. The most intense gold mineralisation is associated with fold zones, averaging between 10 and 30m in thickness with intense veining.

Albazino is mined by conventional open-pit truck-shovel and drill-and-blast methods.

At Albazino, underground mine productivity continued to improve as a result of the full transition to a partially cemented waste backfill. The new mining method had a positive impact on grades that offset slightly lower recovery levels, impacted by near-surface, partially oxidised ore from Ekaterina-1.

Run-of-mine ore is fed to the primary jaw crusher and reduced to 250 mm which is then subject to three-stage milling (in one SAG mill and two ball mills).

Albazino ore is refractory, with the majority of gold intimately associated with arsenopyrite and pyrite in microscopic and sub-microscopic form. As such, it is not amenable to recovery by conventional cyanidation. The zone of oxidised and transitional ore is developed to a maximum depth of 40 m.

Here, the run-of-mine ore is fed to the primary jaw crusher and reduced to 250 mm which is then subject to three-stage milling (in one SAG mill and two ball mills) followed by two-stage conventional flotation in parallel circuits. The flotation concentrate is then thickened, filtered, dried, bagged and shipped to the Amursk POX facility for further processing, while the flotation tails are thickened and sent to the valley-fill tailings storage that is lined with an impoundment dam.

The Albazino concentrator has been running at its full 1,600 ktpa design capacity since its launch in 2011. The bench scale autoclaving test work on the Albazino concentrate was carried out at ........