Pure Gold complete mill upgrade

The company last month completed the installation of six carbon-in-pulp interstage screens and a trommel screen on the semiautogenous grinding mill, leading to a new single day record of 1 037 t of ore on August 31 – 30% more than the current design capacity of 800 t/d.

The Pure Gold mine, in Red Lake, Ontario, achieved an average daily ore throughput of 703 t/d in August, reflecting the downtime to install the interstage and trommel screens. In the last week of August, the throughput increased to an average of 870 t/d.

The mine processed an average total mill feed grade of 5.6 g/t in August and poured 5 535 oz of gold – a new monthly record.

“The mine, now with two independent haulage ways at full-scale production, has demonstrated its ability to produce well beyond 800 t/d. Given these significant improvements, we are targeting a step-up to 1 000 t/d in the fourth quarter and expect to average 850 t/d to 950 t/d over the full fourth quarter,” says Labrenz.

“Importantly, we expect our total operating costs to remain relatively stable even as we step-up production to 1 000 t/d, which will drive unit costs downward over time. We also expect head grades will continue increasing steadily as we get deeper into the orebody over the coming quarters. Taken together, these factors are expected to drive an increase in gold production and a decrease in unit costs quarter-over-quarter through the end of this year and into 2022,” he adds.