Kaiser Reef is working on a plan to turn historic waste dumps into cash at its Union Hill site within the company’s Maldon Gold project in Victoria. The Maldon gold project hosts a remarkable historical production legacy of 1.75 million ounces on mining licences, offering immense potential for renewed exploration to expand resources and reserves through exploration and future development.
Channel sampling of the old Union Hill waste dump material throughout the year averaged 0.6grams per tonne (g/t) gold. Trial processing in October of 2628 tonnes was reconciled at 0.86g/t gold and appears favourable to upgrade mill feed.
Kaiser Reef’s Union Mine waste dump with planned drill holes.
With a dump volume exceeding 410,000 cubic metres, drilling through the dump will better define grade, volume and specific gravity calculations and the conversion to a JORC compliant resource for mining.
‘Maldon represents a district-scale gold opportunity for Kaiser.’
Kaiser Reef managing director Brad Valiukas
Drilling of the waste dumps may confirm economic grades and tonnages of the free digging material and allow Kaiser Reef to continue operating the nearby and underutilised 200,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) Porcupine Flat processing plant profitably. The waste dump could be converted into a low-grade stockpile, which will allow Kaiser to continue working on multiple fronts including continued drilling of the Union Hill pit and underground resources and testing the many local and regional exploration targets.
Kaiser Reef managing director Brad Valiukas said: “With historical gold production of 1.75m ounces grading 28g/t gold, Maldon represents a district-scale gold opportunity for Kaiser, with numerous historical mines and lines of working that remain significantly underexplored.”
Located 1.5 kilometres north of the old Union Hill pit is another waste dump known as Nuggetty that is also in line for testing once permitting is granted. It contains over 16,000 cubic metres of waste material and was subject to a 321-rock sampling survey completed earlier in the year that returned assays averaging 1.8g/t gold.
Kaiser’s Union Hill open pit is currently on care and maintenance and has a resource of 186,000 ounces of gold grading 4.4g/t. Today the open pit only provides access to an old underground portal and development. It was mined prior to 1926 and produced 491,000 gold ounces. It was mined again between 1988 and 1992, producing approximately 50,000 ounces of the yellow metal from about one million tonnes of remnant ore.
Recent diamond drilling within the pit intersected several outstanding hits including 5.8m grading 5.37g/t gold from 39m, 6.9m running at 6.05g/t gold from 30m and 8.6m going 4.99g/t gold from 18.4m. The drilling successfully demonstrated grade continuity, delineated mineralisation in unmined portions of the pit and confirmed the presence of high-grade spur veins.
