Australia’s Federal Government has approved Bendigo Mining‘s plan to expand its Carshalton mine, which will anchor its New Bendigo gold project in southeastern Australia’s Victoria state.
Bendigo says the approval from the Department of Environment and Heritage is the final major milestone in the permitting process, and allows the company to advance towards full-scale production.
In each of the first three years of production, the mine is expected to produce 83,000 oz. gold from 300,000 tonnes of ore. In 2011, a second million-tonne-per-year processing plant will be added to achieve the design rate of 1.6 million tonnes annually; production at that stage is expected to exceed 570,000 oz. per year. Average cash operating costs are estimated at less than US$120 per oz. Initial capital costs are pegged at A$215 million.
Plans at Carshalton call for two waves of capital investment. The first, A$135-million tranche will finance construction of a 300,000-tonne-per-year processing plant; construction is expected to last about a year. Another A$80 will be required to double the plant capacity in the fourth year, and reach the design throughput rate in the seventh. Construction will begin next year; initial production is slated for late 2005.
Bendigo recently reclassified a substantial portion of the project’s 13-million-oz. “resource potential” into an inferred resource totalling 23.5 million tonnes grading 14.5 grams gold per tonne, calculated in accordance with Australian standards. Another 720,000 tonnes grading 10 grams gold are classified as indicated resources.
The newly tabulated resources include an existing probable underground reserve of 656,000 tonnes grading 9 grams gold, which are sufficient for only three years of operation in line with the company’s plan. Bendigo says the project’s nuggety nature makes defining more reserves prohibitively expensive.
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