Mining plan
The Duparquet Project has been designed as an open pit mine with a planned ore production rate of 2,686,400 tonnes per year, or 8,000 tpd of mineralized material (availability is set at 92% or 336 days per year), except for the first year of production, which has been modeled at 75% of capacity, to reflect a ramp-up period. The mining plan is supplemented by the 4.1Mt of tailings available.
Due to the proximity to the town of Duparquet, adjacent and to the south of the mining concessions of the Duparquet Project, it was decided to select a mining plan that does not include moving any houses, town or provincial infrastructures. Click here to See Figure 1. The mine scenario would therefore be more socially acceptable, but has the effect of leaving in-situ parts of the deposit. These untouched portions may be recovered eventually. It is anticipated that permitting and construction of the mine would take approximately three years.
Pit optimization was performed by Pierre-Jean Lafleur and InnovExplo using Whittle software from Geovia (previously Gemcom). The optimized pit shell was generated by a Lerchs-Grossmann pit optimizer algorithm, using the following cost and economic parameters.
Description Cost============================================================================Working days (mill/mine) 336/360Selling price (in Canadian dollars) 1,449 $/ozRefinery cost 5 $/ozProduction 2,686,400 t/year 8,000 t/dayMining recovery 90.9%Dilution 10%General administration 4.18 $/tOverburden Removal 2 $/tMining cost (ore and waste) 2.40 $/tWater management 0.24 $/tProcess recovery of mineralized material 93.9%Process cost; mineralized material 13.46 $/tTransportation cost from stockpile to mill 0.25 $/tProcess recovery of tailing 83.9%Process cost; tailings (including 0.30$/t transportation to mill) 11.07 $/t============================================================================
The contained Measured and Indicated resources in the selected pit are 23.10 Mt at a grade of 1.56g/t and Inferred Resources of 14.45 Mt at a grade of 1.10g/t. Dilution was estimated at 10% and mining recovery at 90.9%. Measured and Indicated resources represent 69.2 % of the resources in the selected pit and 71.2% considering the tailings.
The milling circuit includes crushing, grinding, gravity, flotation, pressure oxidation and carbon-in-pulp leaching (CIP). Metallurgical test work indicates that the use of the pressure oxidation technology prior to leaching improves the overall average gold recoveries to 93.2 % (93.9 % for mineralized material and 83.9 % for tailings) based on tests carried out at SGS Lakefield. Milling costs were estimated at $13.46/t processed. Tailings milling costs were estimated at $11.07/t.
