The Paulsens deposit lies within the west-northwest trending regional Wyloo anticlinal dome. Archaean Fortescue Group metasediments and metavolcanics of the Hamersley Basin are exposed in the core of the dome and form the host rocks of the Paulsens deposit. Paulsens is a mesothermal, orogenic lodestyle gold deposit with mineralisation occurring within a structurally controlled quartz vein, up to 40m thick, hosted between a structurally offset section of gabbro intrusive, within a folded, sedimentary sequence. The quartz body is found between the two halves of a large faulted Gabbro dyke. The mineralisation is cut in places by a series of steeply dipping dolerite dykes that vary from one to ten metres in thickness.

The main body of mineralisation comprises an Upper (UZ) and Lower (LZ) Zone located on the hanging wall and footwall contacts respectively.

Standard sub level retreat mining methods are predominantly used. Historical mining and reconciliation data have been taken into consideration but without affecting wire frame interpretation. The total model has been coded to identify previously mined areas and only reports remnant mineralisation. Mine Stope Optimiser (MSO) was run at 10m by 10m blocks to identify potentially economic material. This is coarser than the manually created reserve shapes. Small reserve shapes, not picked up by the Resource MOS process, were added to the overall resource.

The crushing plant is a three-stage facility that treats up to 150 tph of minus 550mm Run of-Mine (ROM) ore, to produce a crushed product with P80 of 8mm. The crushing plant consists of a primary jaw crusher and secondary and tertiary cone crushers. Oversize from an inclined double deck vibration screen (apertures 20mm and 8mm) reports to the cone crusher, and undersize reports to the fine ore storage bin (FOB), or the on-ground fine ore stockpile (FOS).

The grinding and classification facility operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to mill 450 000 tpa. Grinding is performed by a 3.51m diameter by 5.63m long (inside shell) rubber lined overflow ball mill, equipped with a 1,000KW motor. A cluster of six hydrocyclones (four operational, two standby) is used to classify the slurry to a P80 of 106µm.

As previously mentioned the Paulsens processing facility is currently on care and maintenance as an intense exploration program is carried out.

The Paulsens Gold Mine utilises a combination of Acacia Intensive Leach Reactors and a Carbon in Leach (CIL) circuit for the extraction of gold.

The underflow from the hydrocyclones is split with a stream passing over a gravity screen to scalp the plus 2.4mm material before it reports to two Knelson Centrifugal Concentrators that are installed in parallel. The Knelson Concentrators collect free gold particles and particles with high density by applying a centrifugal force. Concentrate periodically passes to a pair of Acacia Reactors for gold recovery. The Acacia Reactors utilise sodium hydroxide, cyanide, and Leach Aid to leach the gold particles. Gold is recovered from the leach solution via dedicated gravity electrowinning circuits inside the gold room.

Overflow from the cyclones gravitates to a 7.0m diameter ........