Open pit mining is planned to use conventional truck and shovel mining methods with drill and blasting to break the rock mass into manageable particle sizes. Mining operations are planned to be undertaken by a contractor operated fleet, which is the cost basis for this preliminary economic assessment.
The following design parameters where used for the PEA study revision:
• Fully mobile production equipment, consisting of medium sized hydraulic shovels and 90 tonne rigid dump trucks has been planned;
• Total mining costs of $2.40/t of material moved at altitude is the basis for the Project economics;
• Support equipment will be Front End Loaders, tracked dozers, graders, and water trucks;
• The run-of-mine (RoM) pad at near the Process Plants primary crusher will be the mining and process battery limit;
• Benchmarked operation elevation of 4,700masl was used;
• Optimisation of mining sequencing to minimise the waste stripping costs in phase I of the production ramp up;
• 10m waste benches, with stacking of 2 benches was basis of the design used to access mineralized material to a maximum depth of 200m;
• Geotechnically designed slope are applied to relevant pit areas.
Waste dump will be planned in accordance with environmental constraints and located around the pit edges once it has been confirmed that there are no additional mineral resources in these areas.
Backfilling of waste into mined out pit area ........
