Name and Location
Castle Hill and Red Dam gold projects, Australia.

Client
Phoenix Gold.

Project Description
An independent definitive feasibility study (DFS) completed on Phoenix’s core projects at Castle Hill, Red Dam and the satellite pits within a 15 km radius, assumes a standalone two-million-tonne-a-year processing plant at Castle Hill for high-grade ore and a two-million-tonne-a-year heap-leach plant in close proximity for lower-grade ore treatment. The project has total ore reserves of 30.59-million tonnes, grading 1.18 g/t of gold and total mineral resources of 103.4-million tonnes, grading 1.1 g/t of gold.

A staged development approach has been proposed.

Opencut mining will be conducted using truck-and-shovel excavation methods under a contract mining operation. The DFS found that the following deposits could be economically mined based on a gold price of A$1 310/oz:
• Castle Hill Stage 1, comprising the Mick Adam and Wadi openpits, located 500 m from the proposed Castle Hill processing plant;
• Castle Hill Stage 2, comprising the Kintore pits, located 6.5 km from the Castle Hill processing plant;
• Red Dam, located 11.5 km from the Castle Hill processing plant; and
• various satellite deposits.

Contract opencut mining under Phoenix management will start at the Mick Adam and Wadi pits and will produce the majority of the mill feed for the first five years of operation. The Red Dam and smaller satellite pits will start as required to ensure efficient mine fleet scheduling and optimal ore blending through the processing plant. The proposed heap-leach plant is planned to commence in year two to treat the lower-grade material from Castle Hill to complement the milling operation.

Haulage of ore to the Castle Hill plant will use existing haul road infrastructure where required. Ore from the Mick Adam and Wadi openpits will be delivered to the run-of-mine (RoM) pad by the contract mining fleet directly from the mine, with the ability to direct tip the ore in to the primary crusher chamber, with significant cost savings.

The processing plant is based on a nominal two-million tonnes a year on the proposed blend at P80 125 μm grind size. The plant design proposed is simple, but robust, and broadly comprises two-stage open-circuit crushing to a low aspect single-stage semiautogenous (SAG) grinding circuit with a recycle crusher. The SAG mill is 5.8 m in diameter and 9.2 m long powered by a 6 MW motor. The gravity circuit comprises two Knelson concentrators discharging into an in-line leach reactor. The plant has six carbon-in-leach tanks, each with a nominal capacity of 1 500 m, providing a slurry residence time in the leach circuit of 24 hours at a two-million-tonne-a-year throughput. A 12 m3 elution column is used for desorption.

Value
Total capital costs are estimated at A$136-million.

Duration
The project is expected to take 18 months to complete, with project development expected to start in the second half of this year.

Latest Developments
The Phoenix board has approved a staged development strategy of the projects, using spare milling capacity in the region to enable early net cash flow generation and also potentially use existing agreements with Norton Gold Fields.

Key Contracts and Suppliers
None stated.

On Budget and on Time?
Not stated.

Contact Details for Project Information
Phoenix Gold, tel +61 8 9021 2704, fax +61 8 9021 3393 or email info@phoenixgold.com.au.