The company said that a ball mill motor bearing failure occurred on a restart of the Gruyere processing facility after a scheduled maintenance shutdown. Upon detection of the failure, a specialist team was mobilised to site.

Following a thorough inspection, the root cause of the failure has been determined, rectification measures have been taken and the available spare has been installed, with normal processing operations resuming on Thursday, following a seven-day hiatus.

All-in sustaining costs (AISC) for Gold Road’s attributable share of production was expected to peak in the September quarter, with lower gold production as the operation transitioned to fresh rock processing, with the quarter’s costs impacted by reduced gold production. Configuration of the milling circuit for fresh rock processing required some additional plant downtime early in the quarter to maintain throughput rates, Gold Road told shareholders.

Due to the ball mill motor bearing failure and additional plant downtime early in the quarter, Gold Road anticipates gold produced for the September quarter to be 53 000 oz to 57 000 oz, while AISC for the September 2020 quarter are anticipated to be in the range of A$1 540/oz to A$1 590/oz.

As a result of this quarter’s production disruptions, full year production guidance for 2020 is anticipated at 250 000 to 270 000 oz, down from the previous estimate of between 250 000 to 285 000 oz, and Gold Road’s attributable annual AISC guidance is revised to between A$1 250/oz and A$1 350/oz, compared with the previously estimated A$1 150/oz to A$1 250/oz