www.silverlakeresources.com.au
Silver Lake Resources (ASX: SLR) is a gold producing and exploration company with a resource base of 3.3 million ounces in highly prospective regions including the Mount Monger goldfield and the Murchison (Tuckabianna, Comet and Moyagee).
Silver Lake Resources' strategy is to develop large production centres at Mount Monger and at the Murchison with multiple mines at each centre. Silver Lake's exploration program is targeting 5 million ounces of gold in resource.
Silver Lake Resources continues on track for 200,000 ounce gold production by 2014
Silver Lake Resources (ASX:SLR) has received assay results from a drilling program at the Wombola Dam deposit at its Mount Monger operations which have returned multiple near surface intersections located outside the project’s current resource.
Wombola is the fifth ore source now in operation at the company’s Mount Monger operations.
Production is currently being sourced from four independent underground mines accessed from the same infrastructure, being Daisy Milano, Daisy East, Rosemary and Haoma. Open pit production is also being sourced from Wombola Dam.
Highlights at Wombola West include 3 metres at 11.8 grams per tonne (g/t) of gold from 9 metres, and 1 metre at 20.7g/t gold from 53 metres, which is well supported by Wombola North, which delivered 4 metres at 8.8g/t gold from 15 metres, and 3 metres at 5.2g/t gold from 5 metres.
Managing director Les Davis said, “Our exploration programs continue to deliver highly encouraging results. We plan to continue drilling at Mount Monger with multiple drill rigs well into the future.”
Wombola Dam is located just 5 kilometres north-west of the Daisy Milano mine and has a current JORC Resource of 433,000 tonnes at 3.9 grams per tonne gold for 54,500 ounces.
Extensional drilling has been in progress to the west and north of Wombola Dam testing for mineralisation outside of the current pit shells to increase the potential open pit mining inventory.
Wombola production
Silver Lake expects production from Wombola to be a two stage process.
Stage one, known as the starter pit, is predominately transitional/fresh (hard) rock to produce around 13,000 ounces over a 9 month period at a strip ratio of 4.8:1 (waste:ore) at a cash operating cost of A$432 per ounce.
Given the near surface nature of the mineralisation the first ore was delivered to the run of mine pad just one week after the surface top soil removal commenced.
The starter pit extracts less than 30% of the total resource down to a depth of around 35 metres, with stage two kicking off after the completion of the starter pit, with further drilling to be carried out below 35 metres.
Grade control and depth drilling will also be completed within the conceptual big pit shell.
Silver Lake said this drilling is expected to complete the mining study for the second stage.
While the drilling and mining study for stage two is being completed it is expected, subject to a decision to mine, to commence production at the nearby Wombola Pit deposit.
Mount Monger operations
Silver Lake’s Mount Monger operations have a current JORC resource of 5.1 million tonnes at 8.9g/t for 1.5 million ounces of gold.
The company is targeting an increase in production from the operations to 200,000 ounces per annum by 2014 via mining from multiple underground and open pit ore sources.
Meanwhile, expansion of the Lakewood Gold Processing Facility to 700,000 tonnes per annum by December 2011 and 1 million tonnes per annum by the September quarter of 2012 is on track and progressing to plan.
