Great Panther Mining Limited said the Tucano geotechnical committee has recommended additional remediation work on the Urucum Central South (UCS) open pit to improve safety factors.
With safety of the utmost concern, the company has opted to temporarily suspend the mining of ore from UCS, while measures are being taken to ensure the wellbeing of workers.
In the quarterly operations update released last week, Great Panther noted that precipitation levels in northern Brazil rose by about 25% compared to historical averages during the third quarter.
READ: Great Panther Mining releases 3Q production tallies and operational update
Subsequently, the company detected movement in the west wall of the UCS pit and suspended work for four days until conditions were deemed stable to ensure the safety of the workers on site.
According to Great Panther, based on preliminary information from the engineers received on October 16, 2021, additional waste material needs to be removed and work has commenced on a new pushback on the west wall of the UCS pit.
This additional work is expected to take six to eight weeks to complete.
The precious metals company is also in the process of having vertical drains installed in the west wall of the UCS pit to reduce and mitigate water levels. The drains are expected to be in place by late November.
Additionally, there is an effort underway to define alternatives to accelerate production from other areas at Tucano, but expects the consolidated production guidance to be lower than anticipated and costs to be higher than forecast as a result of the required work.
"UCS is one of several pits at Tucano and we are considering multiple pathways to accelerate production from other areas," Rob Henderson, President and CEO of Great Panther said in a statement.
Henderson went on to say: "This latest development is indeed a setback and delays our ramp up back to full production, but ultimately we expect to realize the value from the UCS pit once the pushback activity is complete. We continue to mine ore from the Urucum North open pit, and we are moving forward with plans to bring the TAP C open pit back into production and advance the high-grade underground project. Stripping continues on the TAP AB pit, which is scheduled to deliver ore in 2022."
Located in Brazil, the Tucano underground mine mineral reserves are situated below the Urucum North open pit and access would be via a portal located at the north end of the pit. Great Panther estimates the 1,000 tonne per day underground mine could yield 40,000 to 50,000 gold ounces per year.
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