time to buy

Brad Ricks


Tuesday, October 26, 2004
CRESCENT Mining executive director Andrew Haythorpe has hinted at a possible expansion of the plant at its Laverton gold project in Western Australia to a capacity "considerably over" 1 million tonnes per annum.

Haythorpe told MiningNews.net a portion of the company's feasibility study for a 50-70,000 ounce per annum gold operation was likely to be released in the next month, pointing to its future plans for the mill.

"At one stage in its past, when Sons of Gwalia had it, this mill was run at a capacity of 1Mtpa for soft oxides," he said.

"We will definitely be refurbishing the mill and making sure that it can run at that 1Mtpa mark but we will be looking at our capital expenditure for the project and we should have some more information soon."

The possible increase in capacity follows a new resource upgrade for the Sickle deposit to 2.08Mt grading 2gpt gold for 133,000oz (at a cut off of 0.8gpt), compared to the previous estimate of 1.2Mt grading 2gpt for 77,000oz.

The total indicated and inferred resource estimate for Sickle, including the primary ore zone, now stands at 6.05Mt at 1.8gpt for 346,000oz, taking the total measured indicated and inferred resource for the Laverton project to 20.7Mt at 1.5gpt for 1Moz.

Haythorpe said the company was happy with the results of the resource estimation, completed by RSG Global.

"We finally hit the million," he said.

"This is definitely great news for us as we move towards completing a bankable feasibility study.

"Currently we are infill drilling and extending the Sickle resource further so there will be more to come on that as well in the next few weeks."