South Kalgoorlie Operations
- Ownership:
- 100% Alacer Gold
- Location:
- 15 km south of Kalgoorlie, Australia
- Mining:
- Open pit
- Processing:
- Gravity, CIP
- 2011 Gold Production:
- 31,893 ounces
- Proven & Probable Reserves:
-
12.6Mt at 1.3g/t gold for 542,000 ounces
- Measured & Indicated Resources:
-
41.4Mt at 2.1g/t gold for 2,815,000 ounces
(as at December 2011)
The 100%-owned South Kalgoorlie Operation (“SKO”) was acquired by Alacer Gold as part of the merger with Avoca Resources in early 2011. Avoca had acquired SKO as part of the 2010 takeover of Dioro Exploration, who had purchased the operation from Harmony Gold in 2007.
SKO is centred on the Jubilee processing plant, located 15km south of Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. The SKO tenements contain numerous structurally controlled orogenic gold deposits occurring in the Archaean Norseman-Wiluna Greenstone belt, part of the Yilgarn Craton. The HBJ, Mutoroo, Celebration, and Golden Hope gold deposits form a mineralized gold system along the Boulder-Lefroy shear zone that is more than 4 km long. These deposits are hosted within a steeply-dipping, north-northwest-striking package of mafic, ultramafic and sedimentary rocks and schists that have been intruded by felsic to intermediate porphyries.
The primary source of ore for SKO is currently the HBJ deposit which is approximately 2.6 km long and 220m deep. Mining of the HBJ Pit is undertaken via a conventional excavator and truck operation.
Ore is processed through the Jubilee processing plant - a standard crush, grind, leach and CIP circuit with a throughput capacity of 1.2 Mtpa.
The South Kalgoorlie Operation Expansion Project is assessing the economics of replacing the Jubilee processing plant with a new 2.5 Mtpa processing plant.
