The Perama Hill gold deposit is a stratabound, sediment hosted deposit of Eocene to Oligocene age, located at the eastern edge of the Maronia Graben at the contact point with a north northeast trending eastern graben fault. The Perama Hill deposit is described as an initial high sulphidation epithermal system overprinted by typical low sulphidation banded quartz chalcedony, barite, pyrite stockwork veins, and veinlets. Two key controlling factors on the mineralization are the porosity and rock competency contrasts between the volcanic sandstone and underlying andesite package.

The deposit extends 750 m in a north-south direction and up to 300 m in an east-west direction and the thickness varies from 15 m to 20 m at the flanks and up to 125 m at the centre. The gold mineralization has been fed into the system by structurally controlled feeders inside andesitic volcanic breccia and disseminated into overlying porous sandstone units. The central part of the deposit is mushroom-shaped. Eighty percent of the gold is hosted by sandstones and the rest is associated with andesitic volcanic breccia and conglomerates.

Mineralogical studies from the Perama Hill gold deposit indicate that gold mineralization is very uniform throughout the deposit and the gold grain size is small, generally less than 2 µm.

Gold mineralization occurred during the latest stage of silicification and gold bearing siliceous fluids were introduced after structural preparation b ........

Conventional open pit mining would be used at Perama Hill. The pit would operate one eight-hour shift, five days per week. The crushing circuit would operate 16 hours per day, seven days per week. The mining and crushing operating hours were reduced in consideration of their proximity to the local village. The processing plant would operate 24 hours per day.

The mine would use seven 33 tonne trucks and two matching backhoes. A front-end loader would be used for the ore stockpile at the crusher. The process plant would primarily use water from recycled sources, a local borehole as well as surface runoff where possible will supplement process water requirements. The TMF would have a structural fill embankment and filtered tailings near the process plant. The TMF would be a double lined system with impermeable GCL and HDPE membranes.

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The Perama Hill process plant will be designed to treat 1,250,000 t/a of conventional oxide ore cap containing gold and silver bearing ore at a treatment rate of 3,400 tonnes per calendar day at an overall plant availability of 90%. The processing facilities include three stage crushing, followed by a single stage ball mill with a classification step to produce 80% passing 75 µm product size.

Milled ore will be thickened in a high rate thickener prior to pre-aeration and gold/silver dissolution in the CIL circuit. Hydrated lime will be added in the milling circuit. Precious metal dissolution will be by cyanide. Oxygen will be injected into the pre-aeration tank and leaching tanks to enhance the leach kinetics. The CIL circuit will consist of six tanks with a total retention time of 20 hours.

The CIL tailings will be detoxified to remove any remaining cyanide by the INCO SO2 Process. The Environmental Terms of Reference (ETR) requires a CNWAD of < 10 mg/L. Studies ........