Budding gold producer Auric Mining has delivered its first five gold doré bars from its Jeffreys Find gold project near Norseman in Western Australia to the Perth Mint for further refining.
The company has packaged a 36,000-tonne parcel of ore for delivery to the Greenfields Mill in Coolgardie for toll treatment, which is expected to be completed in the coming week.
Gold doré is a semi-pure alloy of gold and other metals that is the final output from the toll milling process. The gold-rich bars are then transported to the Perth Mint, which has a 100-year history steeped in refining the precious yellow metal to its purest form.
With a maiden gold delivery under its belt, the company has squirreled away a further 100,000-tonne package of ore at the mine site that is ready for delivery, adding to the 8000 tonnes waiting in line for processing at the Coolgardie-based mill.
Auric Mining managing director Mark English said: “In a short amount of time we will have a clear understanding on how the project is unfolding with ounces recovered from the first ore parcel. Together with our partners, BML Ventures Pty Ltd of Kalgoorlie, we are confident the result will reconcile well with estimates of mined tonnes and grades.”
Jeffreys Find boasts 1.21 million tonnes grading 1.22 grams per tonne gold for a total of 47,200 ounces. With a mine life just shy of two years, Auric and joint venture partner BML Ventures have etched out a profitable mining operation based on a gold price of $2600 per ounce. With today’s price hovering around the $2900 ounce mark, management says the cream on top could result in an additional $5.7 million free cash.
Auric’s dance partner is an experienced Kalgoorlie-based mining engineering and geological services provider with more than 60 years of combined experience in the WA goldfields. Under the agreement, BML will incur and pay all costs in relation to mining the gold resource at Jeffreys Find.
The two companies will then retain an equal share of the net cash surplus after the payment of all mining and processing costs. Auric expects its proceeds from the maiden pour to boost its coffers by October.
Management then plans to put its surplus cash to work by continuing with the development of its Munda gold deposit at Widgiemooltha and with broader exploration around Norseman, where it holds about 640 square kilometres of tenements in four project areas.
Munda hosts a resource of about 198,700 ounces of gold at a grade of 1.38g/t and is conveniently located about 34km south-west of the mining town of Kambalda. Interestingly, it also sits just 3km south-west of Mincor Resources’ Widgiemooltha gold project, which has a mineral resource of 4.3 million tonnes at 2g/t gold for 273,600 ounces.
A recently-released scoping study on Munda outlined a cashflow surplus of $76.9 million under a base-case scenario using an assumed gold price of $2600 per ounce.
Auric’s maiden gold pour is set to coincide with WA’s premiere mining event – Diggers and Dealers. With the annual soiree of investors and miners set to kick off early next week in Kalgoorlie, some might call it serendipitous that Australia’s latest gold producer can tout its wares in the country’s unofficial gold mining capital.
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By Helen Barling
