Silver Lake sets Mt Monger a 200,000 ounce per annum target
OUT AND ABOUT: Silver Lake Resources is considering a serious ramp-up of the company’s Mount Monger gold mine in Western Australia with the implementation of an approach to lift overall total gold output within two years.
Silver Lake is hoping Mount Monger can achieve a sustained output of 200,000 ounces of gold per annum by 2014 – compared to the total gold output so far of 220,000 ounces since the company listed in 2007.
“We are spending $18 million per annum on gold exploration at our Mount Monger, Murchison and Great Southern suite of gold assets in WA and have debottlenecked our mines and mill at Mount Monger” Silver Lakes managing director Les Davis said in his presentation to the Paydirt 2012 Australian Gold Conference in Perth.
“We are currently expanding the processing facility at Mount Monger to achieve a throughput rate of one million tonnes a year later this year.
“Our objective is to expand our resource base to greater than 10 million ounces of gold and extend our mining operations with a mine life in excess of 10 years based around our current four underground producing mines and one open pit.
“We believe however, that our other close proximity deposits around Mount Monger will generate a number of new mines in that area.”
Davis said the company is backing that up with an anticipated first start to mining at its $65 million 1.9 million ounce Murchison project in the March 2013 quarter sourcing ore from across 14 open pits and four underground deposits.
Silver Lake is spending $35 – $40 million on Murchison’s processing capability and a further $25 million on pre-production mine capital to generate an 8-10 year underground and open pit mine life at a minimum 100,000 ounces a year.
A 250 man camp to service the project is due to be completed at Cue by the end of June.
“Critically, Murchison – which includes copper processing opportunity – offers us a payback period of less than two years at a $1,400 an ounce gold price,” Davis said.