Wait till the yanks start trading this one tonight, they don't...

Wait till the yanks start trading this one tonight, they don't have that many gold stocks to buy :)

www.newmont.com


In 2001, Newmont re-entered Australia after an absence of more than a decade when it acquired a 50% interest in Pajingo through the Battle Mountain acquisition. In February 2002, Newmont acquired Normandy Mining, making Newmont the largest gold producer in Australasia with interests in five mining operations in Western Australia, Queensland, the Northern Territory and New Zealand.


The largest gold mine in Australia is Kalgoorlie’s Super Pit, located 360 miles (580 kilometers) east of Perth. When fully developed, this open pit mine will be 2.7 miles (4.3 kilometers) long, 0.9 mile (1.4 kilometers) wide and 1,650 feet (500 meters) deep. The operations is owned 50% by Newmont and 50% by Barrick Gold Corporation.

Dominated by the Golden Mile lodes, the wider Kalgoorlie goldfield is one of Australia’s historic mining districts. More than 50 million ounces of gold have been recovered in the district since the first discovery in 1893, of which the Kalgoorlie mine has accounted for over 10 million ounces. Yet, like many historic areas, the story of mining at Kalgoorlie must be told in two time periods. Early production peaked in 1903 and nearly ceased by mid-century after high-grade mineralization was depleted. Following a sustained rise in the gold price in the early 1980s and the consolidation of ownership under a single management company, the property was rationalized with the introduction of larger scale modern open pit mining equipment and processing plant.

At the Super Pit, ore is being mined around the extensive legacy underground workings of earlier decades. Large 240-ton (218-tonne) haul trucks and 44-cubic yard (34-cubic meter) shovels move nearly 100 million tons (90 million tonnes) of ore and waste a year, but mining is challenging due to extensive voids created by the underground workings. The grinding and mill and flotation plant processes up to 13 million tons (12 million tonnes) of ore per year. Kalgoorlie has recently completed the installation of a gravity recovery circuit at their Fimiston plant. The key benefit of the gravity circuit is the improvement in overall gold recovery by 0.9%. Most of the resulting concentrate is trucked to a roaster at Gidji, 10 miles (16 kilometers) north of Kalgoorlie, for final gold recovery. Two ultra-fine grinding mills, which grind ore to the consistency of talcum powder, increase the concentrate handling capacity by 40% to 550,000 tons (499,000 tonnes) per year. The flotation tails are also leached for additional gold recovery.

With a workforce of approximately 550 direct employees and 210 contract workers, the mine contributes substantially to the local economy. Over the past several years, the operation has undertaken extensive environmental rehabilitation to reverse historic degradation in the mine area. Some 2.5 square miles (6.5 square kilometers) of land has been restored and 220,000 trees planted to create a green buffer zone between the Super Pit and Kalgoorlie- Boulder, a town of 32,000 people, a quarter mile (400 meters) away.