Overview
Norton acquired the Paddington Gold Mine on 25 August 2007.
The initial aim was to re-establish a stable operating platform
and produce 53,400 oz of gold for the 18 week period up to
31 December 2007. Actual gold produced was 63,020 oz.
Reserves and Resources
The geological database includes data from ~60,000 drill holes
and appraisal work undertaken over more than 25 years covering
69 previously drilled deposits and more than 100 known ore
bodies over 1,200 square kilometres in a 40-kilometre radius
from the Paddington Plant.
Norton is reviewing this database. The initial focus on documentation
detailing Resources and Reserves led to a re-statement of
the Reserve/Resource position in January 2008. Subsequent
work, including additional drilling, led to a further re-statement
in April that identified Mineral Resources of 4.8M oz including
Ore Reserves of 1.01M oz (as defined under the JORC code).
Paddington’s remaining mine-life is now well in excess
of 10 years.
We aim, within two years, to upgrade all remaining engineering
and geological data to JORC standards. Work is being prioritised
according to the mining schedule.
Processing
The Paddington Mill is based on conventional carbon in pulp
(CIP) technology and is low cost due to its large size and
high efficiency.
Facilities include a mill to crush the ore, a grinding circuit,
gravity recovery and cyanide leaching. Gold is extracted from
slurry in the leaching circuit and absorbed onto activated
carbon. The carbon is pumped to an elution column where gold
is washed into solution. The gold-bearing solution is then
passed through a series of electro-winning cells that deposit
the gold onto stainless steel cathodes. The cathodes are rinsed
to yield a gold sludge that is dried then smelted into gold
doré bars containing ~75% gold. The bars are sent to
a refinery where impurities are stripped out to produce 99.99%
gold bullion.
Production
Historical gold production is summarised below: |
