Higginsville Gold Operation
- Ownership:
- 100% Alacer Gold
- Location:
- 125 km south of Kalgoorlie, Australia
- Mining:
- Underground and open pit
- Processing:
- Gravity, CIL
- 2012 Gold Production:
- 136,687 ounces
- Proven & Probable Reserves:
- 6.9Mt at 3.7g/t gold for 0.83 milllion ounces
- Measured & Indicated Resources:
-
11.6Mt at 3.4g/t gold for 1.26 million ounces
(as at December 2012)
The 100%-owned Higginsville Gold Operation (“Higginsville”) was acquired by Alacer as part of the merger with Avoca Resources in early 2011. The Trident Gold Deposit, which contains the bulk of the reserves at Higginsville, was discovered by Avoca in 2004 with mining commencing in 2007.
The mine is located 125 km south of Kalgoorlie within the Eastern Goldfields region of Western Australia and is situated between the prolific St Ives and Norseman gold camps. The Higginsville Gold Operation is made up of structurally controlled orogenic gold deposits occurring in the Archaean Norseman-Wiluna Greenstone belt, part of the Yilgarn Craton. Many of these deposits have been mined at surface, but until the Trident Gold Deposit, few have been explored extensively at depth. Alacer believes that with continued aggressive exploration at depth, the future of Higginsville will extend far beyond the current reserves.
The Higginsville processing plant currently treats ore from the Trident and Chalice underground mines.
The primary mining method at the Trident underground mine is underground mechanized sub-level open stoping. Stopes are backfilled with paste to ensure maximum recovery of the ore without the need for pillars.
The Higginsville processing plant is a standard crush, grind, gravity and CIL circuit with a throughput currently at approximately1.2Mtpa.
The Higginsville Gold Operation produced 136,687 ounces during calendar 2012 at a Total Cash Cost of $1,159 per ounce.
