Westgold’s Bluebird-South Junction mine in Western Australia has reported a 107 per cent increase in its ore reserve.
The ore reserve now sits at 7.2 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) at 2.5 grams per tonne, contributing to an overall 400 per cent increase in the Bluebird ore reserve for the year.
“Drilling continues to transform our business, and across the Bluebird-South Junction mining complex we have not yet defined the limits of this ever-expanding system,” Westgold managing director and chief executive officer Wayne Bramwell said.
“Project economics and free cash flow is enhanced by a large, productive underground mine feeding a large processing plant. We have all these ingredients at Meekatharra as the Bluebird-South Junction underground mine is the primary ore source feeding the 1.4–1.8Mtpa Bluebird processing plant that sits 500m from the portal.”
The mineralisation at South Junction remaining open at depth, along strike and down plunge, and the company is confident it will continue to extend and infill the mineral resource to further increase the life of the project.
“With scale comes the opportunity to reduce costs with mine studies to-date showing that the South Junction deposit lends itself to a lower-cost, bulk extraction mining method that will deliver higher ounces-per-vertical metre – underpinning its potential to be a highly effective mining operation on the doorstep of our Meekatharra process plant,” Bramwell said.
“We look forward to providing updates on this work, as well as the ongoing mining studies at Bluebird-South Junction as we further increase outputs to 1.2Mtpa during the second half of the 2024–25 financial year.”
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