The company has secured a second operational diamond drill rig, targeting resource extensions, with Cradle Zone comprising an initial target. It sits above a large portion of the Henty mine.
Kaiser Reef managing director Brad Valiukas said: “We continue to see significant upside at Henty, and I’m very pleased with the progress to date. Increasing the processing rate, de-bottlenecking the decline and bringing in more productive equipment are key improvements to drive down unit costs per tonne across the business, noting that a large portion of Henty’s costs are considered fixed.”
Valiukas said the company is looking to build both mine life and resilience at Henty in the coming year, with a 2025 Resource and Reserve statement due shortly.
Henty is an underground operation containing a current resource of 449,000 ounces of gold grading at 3.4 grams per tonne (g/t) and an ore reserve of 154,000 ounces at 4g/t gold. The mine’s historical production is 1.4 million ounces at a stellar grade of 8.9g/t gold.
Since assuming operatorship of the Henty mine, Kaiser appears to have kicked plenty of goals. It pulled in more than $10.1 million in free cash flows in the June quarter, boosting its bank balance to an impressive $24.7 million at the end of June. In July it swelled to more than $28 million cash at bank.
Notably, the company only took control of the operating levers at Henty on May 15.
Kaiser revealed recently that its first full quarter of mining operations at the Henty mine pumped out a solid 8115 ounces of gold at an impressive grade of 4.12 grams per tonne (g/t).
At those quarterly numbers, the company looks like it is going to be able to deliver on its stated goal to generate an annual run-rate of 30,000 ounces of gold, or 7500 ounces for the quarter.
Earlier this month, experienced mining engineer Brad Valiukas was appointed to the role of Kaiser’s managing director.
Valiukas, who has been an executive director of Kaiser since January, is no stranger when it comes to running mining operations. He worked as the mine manager at Mincor Resources’ Redross mine, worked as a consultant mining engineer with global outsourcing firm RSG Global and was a founding director of ASX-listed Aurumin Ltd, steering the ship as managing director there for more than four years from its listing in 2020.
Kaiser plans to eventually serve up 50,000 ounces of gold per annum from its Tasmanian and Maldon, Victorian operations combined. To bolster its steps towards that production number, it launched into further drilling in Victoria in September, with that program now completed and assays dispatched to the lab. Results are expected in about 2 weeks.
The Maldon gold project is joined at the hip with an operating 200,000 tonne per annum processing plant, potentially providing Kaiser Reef with yet another walk up production opportunity.
The gold price is continuing to run rampant too, surging towards a US$4500 (A$6916) per ounce level. It touched an all-time high last week of US$4379 (A$6760) for an ounce of the precious yellow metal.
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