Meeka Metals is charging along in fine style developing its flagship Murchison gold project near Meekatharra in Western Australia’s Mid West region, with first gold production slated for mid-new year.
Establishment of new milling, processing, administration and camp infrastructure and other earthworks, such as site access and tails retention, continues in tandem with new surface and underground resource development at the company’s Turnberry and Andy Well deposits.
At the carbon-in-leach gold processing plant site, several areas of work are running in parallel, including reinforcement installation and concrete pours for the massive slab footings and mounting plinths for the company’s new 750 kilowatt ball mill.
This can be a lengthy process with some time required for the concrete to harden to specification so it can withstand the long-term stresses of the multi-tonne rotating mass of the mill, its grinding media and ore contents and to ensure correct alignment for proper balance and smooth running with minimal bearing wear.
Skins have also been fabricated for a new 145 cubic metre tank and two new 600 cubic metre tanks for the expanded carbon-in-leach circuit have been installed. Preparations have also been made to install a new cyanide tank in 2025.
Tank footings are already in place or are being completed, with their base ring-beams already located.
At the Turnberry mine site, infrastructure has been expanded to accommodate underground mining functions along with the facilities for an open pit mining team.
Civil works are also in train for the new Turnberry administration complex, with in-ground services scheduled for installation next month. The mining contractor’s workshop and administration buildings will be established in February.
Meeka Metal managing director Tim Davidson said: “We continue to deliver into the development schedule as planned, with the progress made leading up to and through the Christmas period a testament to the team’s focus on delivering first gold in mid-2025. The company is well positioned for this significant progress to continue in 2025.”
Reverse circulation (RC) grade control drilling is also ongoing at Turnberry for the shallow stage one oxide open pits, with 14,440 metres of drilling undertaken up to December this year.
Assay results have been received and reported for 20 of the 145 RC holes drilled to date, while drilling and further assay reporting will continue into the new year.
The company’s recent drilling programs have targeted extensions to the Turnberry and St Anne’s deposits as well as within the Fairway shear zone and 3.5 kilometres along strike to the south of Turnberry.
The Turnberry deposit hosts multiple broad zones of shallow, high-grade gold, with its mineral resource averaging about 1600 ounces of gold per vertical metre from surface, as defined so far to a depth of 200m where the density of drilling becomes thinner.
Meeka’s Murchison gold project embraces a combined landholding of 281 square kilometres in the highly-prospective Murchison goldfields and hosts a substantial high-grade 1.2 million ounce gold resource.
All of the resources sit on established mining leases, offering few impediments to the company’s planned developments. It is navigating a planned and staged pathway to operational start-up, actively expanding its mineral resources while moving steadily toward production.
In this endeavour, it has achieved considerable exploration success since 2022 with the definition of multiple new high-grade lodes at St Anne’s and high-grade extensions to Turnberry.
Meeka’s recent past strategy has been to rapidly expand the mineral resources of the Murchison gold project through drilling while concurrently completing the necessary studies to advance to a development-ready state for the project.
Its resource growth focus has been directed towards near-mine targets identified through geophysics and in encouraging but inadequately-drilled areas that require more follow-up work.
The company’s key targets include shallow, high-grade gold mineralisation at St Anne’s and further extensions to the 685,000 ounce Turnberry gold deposit.
Other potential high-value geophysical targets remain to be investigated along the 7km Fairway shear zone extending along strike from Turnberry to better identify mafic rocks that are the principal host of gold mineralisation within the belt.
An initial Murchison gold feasibility study was released in July 2023, outlining a straightforward development strategy that delivered already impressive production and financial outcomes for the company over an initial 9.3 year production plan.
An expanded feasibility study was released for the project in December 2024, in view of the anticipated bigger capacity ball mill, now onsite and awaiting installation.
The increased mill throughput enables access to new open pit, underground and stockpiled resource areas. Meeka says this will result in a 31 per cent growth in ore reserves and a 40 per cent increase in production, averaging 65,000 ounces of gold per year for first seven years and an undiscounted pre-tax free cash flow of $1 billion over an initial 10-year production plan.
Meeka appears well-advanced on its site works and continues to line up resource ounces to augment an already impressive start-up resource base, which all represent a solid base from which to launch into the new year.
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By Doug Bright
