PERTH (miningweekly.com) - Gold miner Norton Gold Fields on Thursday told shareholders it would spend some A$40-million to start immediate development on the Enterprise openpit project, in Western Australia, following an 18% increase in the deposit’s indicated and inferred mineral resource.

The Enterprise deposit is now estimated to host some 1.22-million ounces of gold, with a probable reserve of 563 000 oz.

Norton MD and CEO Dr Dianmin Chen said on Thursday that the Enterprise openpit mine would be the next baseload operation for the company’s Paddington operations, supplying the bulk of ore to the 3.3-million-ton-a-year Paddington mill.

“With a higher grade than [the] Navajo Chief [project], the current baseload operation, Enterprise, will allow us to both increase Paddington’s gold production and reduce unit production costs.”

The Enterprise openpit mine would provide an additional five years of ore production to the Paddington mill, at around 110 000 oz/y of gold. Openpit operations, using an owner–operator mining fleet and existing infrastructure, would start in April this year.

Full ore production was planned for November.

Enterprise also had considerable potential for an underground operation, as beneath the opencut design, a deeper underground indicated and inferred mineral resource of some 3.2-million tons at 3.04 g/t gold had been delineated.

Norton had now started a definitive feasibility study on the underground orebody, and was anticipating completing this study before the end of the year.

Chen noted that Enterprise represented a significant investment in Norton’s future, its investors and the Goldfields community, and strongly supported Norton’s position as a long-term gold miner in Western Australia.

Funding for the project would be sourced from the $105-million credit facility from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. The project was expected to have a net present value of some A$136.6-million and an internal rate of return of 66%.