Ravenswood Gold expansion steams towards finish line

The $300 million Ravenswood Gold expansion project has hit the home straight, with construction work about 95 per cent complete. Ravenswood Gold general manager operations Dave Mackay said the site was set to hit its targeted output rate of over 200,000 oz per annum around the end of the year after a short ramp-up period. Commissioning is nearly completed on the new 12.5 Mt/annum primary, secondary and tertiary crusher units. And a new 12-megawatt ball mill is in the final stages of assembly. “The major (Mill 4) components are all in. The reline crews are putting the mill liner in it and then it's just the final electrical and lube work to complete,” Mr Mackay said. “We're expecting to start the mill commissioning early August. “That's the final piece of the puzzle. And then we start really ramping the tonnes up and more than doubling gold production again.” Owners EMR and GEAR committed to the expansion project when they took over the Ravenswood gold operations, 90km east of Charters Towers, from Resolute Mining in 2020. In addition to boosting output to make Ravenswood Queensland’s leading gold producer, the project is expected to add at least 15 years to the operation’s lifespan. Ravenswood Gold general manager operations Dave Mackay. The operation has already more than doubled its gold production rate compared to this time last year. This is a result of gold head grades rather than increased plant capacity. Mr Mackay said the increase to the equivalent of 100,000 oz a year had come about as mining at the new Buck Reef pit moved into high-grade gold ore. “We're currently getting some 1g to 1.1g-gold-per-tonne ore out of the expanded Buck Reef pit,” he said. “This time last year we were mining about 0.6g-gold-per-tonne ore out of the pit and processing the low-grade mineralised waste dump that runs at about 0.4g (gold per tonne). “So we've essentially doubled our head grade at the moment, which has doubled our gold production.” Related: Ravenswood Gold mine adds hi-tech assay capacity Ravenwood Gold is due to begin mining next year in the old Sarsfield pit, last mined in 2009. “There's about a 12-month lead before we get any significant ore out of Sarsfield,” Mr Mackay said. “So we want to start that to make sure that we can fill the plant with ore out of Sarsfield by the time we finish mining the Buck Reef pit in another few years’ time.” Although construction activity for the expansion project is nearing an end, there are still hundreds of additional workers at Ravenswood Gold. “On any given day, there's about 200 construction contractors on site at the moment, and that means a lot of pressure on the camp, a lot of pressure on services,” Mr Mackay said. “…It'll be good just to peg it back to our own ongoing long-term team, and be able to really focus on what we're doing and where we're going.” M2P and MineLec are the two key contractors remaining to complete the Mill 4 construction and commissioning works. The workforce post-construction will sit around 500, including 380 to 400 Ravenswood Gold employees and another 100 people between major contractors. These include drilling contractor Roc-Drill, explosives provider Orica, caterer Cater Care and local contractor SimmCo, who carry out ancillary haulage work. A new 12-megawatt ball mill is in the final stages of assembly at Ravenswood Gold.

Ravenswood Gold expansion steams towards finish line

Industry Queensland

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