TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Great Basin Gold produced 5 511 oz of gold from its new Burnstone mine during the first quarter, and recorded the first quarterly revenue from the operation, of $3,8-million, after selling 2 794 oz.
The ounces were mainly recovered from lower-grade development ore that was processed, and gold recoveries, which came in at 83% for the quarter, and are expected to improve as the grade of the mill feed rises, the company said in a statement.
“Although experiencing the usual philips mixer grinder price in uaechallenges with bringing a new mine into production, Burnstone is settling into a production rhythm and the progress made by the team on a monthly basis is reassuring,” CEO Ferdi Dippenaar said.</pstone crushed bridgeport>
The metallurgical plant at Burnstone processed about 200 000 t of ore during the quarter, which was in line with the production build-up plan, Great Basin said.
The company is augmenting underground tons with stockpiled material,where to crushing gold ore in india to keep the mill running at an average of 90 000 t/m, until the underground mining ramps up enough to increase to the target rate of 125 000 t/m.
The firm expects to produce 18 000 oz from Hollister in the second quarter, Dippenaar said.
At Great Basin's other mine, the Hollister operation in Nevada, the company extracted 21 828 t, and recovered 28 500 gold-equivalent ounces.
Only 17 500 oz were recognised in revenue, the balance had been delivered but not sold to the refiner by the end of the quarter.
The company's Esmeralda mill treated 21 634 t during the three months, with an average head grade of about one gold-equivalent ounce per ton.
“The Nevada operations showed improvements in a number of areas during the quarter, notably on ounces recovered through trial mining as well as the improved recoveries at our Esmeralda Mill,” Dippenaar said.
“The latter improvement is especially pleasing with the impact already evident in both the resulting cash costs and the ounces delivered to the refinery.”
Great Basin said it expects to report a loss per share of $0,05 for the first quarter, after earnings were affected by the delay in recognizing revenue from the Nevada operations, as well as some other charges.