Cash flow with further growth potential
The White Dam Gold Operation is located in South Australia, approximately 80km south-west of Broken Hill.
The White Dam Gold Operation is a heap leach project and since, 2010 has produced approximately 175,000 oz gold from heap leaching of ~7.5 Mt of ore which has been mined from two open pits. Available reconciliation of mining against resource estimates is good and indicates that a significant tonnage of mineralised material remains to be mined from both the Hannaford and Vertigo open pits.
Following 13 months in a cashflow JV with Round Oak Minerals, on 30 July 2021 GBM took 100% control of the White Dam Project, including:
- Mine heap leach and adsorption facility
- In-pit remnant mineralisation - JORC Resource 102 koz gold
- Small team of skilled plant operators
- 489km² of mining and exploration licences with priority drill targets defined
Significant infrastructure footprint
The White Dam Gold operation includes the open pit mines, dump / heap leach, the gold extraction plant and related infrastructure.
Over the last 9 months gold production has averaged ~430 oz / quarter. Water supply has continued to improve with an increasing percentage of the heap being irrigated.
Further development activities
With the acquisition, GBM will now progress a number of operating and production enhancements which together will further optimise and expand gold and copper production from the existing heap leach operation.
Following on from the announcement of the maiden JORC Mineral Resource Estimate for White Dam in August 2020 (see GBM ASX release dated 10 August 2020), GBM has initiated studies to evaluate the potential to mine these resources at current metal prices, utilising the capacity of the SART plant to recover copper and regenerate cyanide. Future production if economic, will rely on only funding mining costs and working capital (until gold leaching delivers sales) as the infrastructure, including heaps and a gold processing plant is already in place. This provides GBM with optionality and a low cost/risk further development opportunity.
Approximately 4,000 m of drilling at Vertigo (43 holes) and White Dam North (10 holes) has been completed. First encouraging assays have been reported (see GBM ASX release dated 5 July 2021) with the remaining assays expected in the coming weeks. The main focus of this drilling was on the Vertigo resource (38 koz Au) as an initial further heap leach feed, being on the granted mining lease. The drilling was targeted to improve confidence levels (including total/cyanide soluble copper grades) and key inputs to progress studies targeted at evidencing positive development economics.
