Brought to you by BULLS N’ BEARS
Rowena Duckworth
Every gold mining company has a dream it works towards from the first day of listing on the ASX – the moment gold actually comes out of the ground and into a tray.
For Pacgold Limited, that moment arrived this week as the company officially crossed the line from explorer to producer, pouring the maiden gold from its White Dam heap leach operation.
In a milestone moment, the Brisbane-based company successfully produced a maiden pour from White Dam, 80 kilometres east of Broken Hill in South Australia’s Olary Province.
The initial strip from the heap leach operation recovered approximately 60 ounces of calcined gold product from just the first 14 days of absorption following the plant’s recommissioning. This represents a modest but symbolically important moment for the company, marking its official transition from explorer to producer.
‘The entire team is extremely proud to have achieved our first gold production from the White Dam.’
Pacgold Limited managing director Matthew Boyes
White Dam is a heap leach operation in which ore is stacked on a lined pad and irrigated with a cyanide solution, dissolving the gold. The gold-bearing solution, known as the pregnant solution, is then collected and passed through a series of carbon-in-column (CIC) tanks, which adsorb the gold. The yellow metal is subsequently stripped and smelted into Doré bars for sale.
Heap leach is a well-established, relatively low-cost processing method well-suited to the style of mineralisation at White Dam. Interestingly, it isn’t a common technique of large-scale mining in Australia.
Progress towards full operations at White Dam, meanwhile, is gathering pace, according to management. Four of the five main CIC tanks have now been fully refurbished and are operating at better than 95 per cent efficiency following a significant plant overhaul.
New power generation units are now in place, the strip circuit and electrowinning cells have been repaired and the crushing circuit is steadily ramping up output. Three more strip cycles are planned before the company produces and ships its first Doré product, currently targeted for the end of April.
A key landmark alongside the first gold is the start of re-crushing and re-irrigation. The top lift of the pad – or top section of the ore – has now been re-crushed and placed back under irrigation, breaking up the previously leached ore to expose fresh gold-bearing surfaces to the cyanide solution.
Production ramp-up will begin in earnest soon. The crushing circuit is currently producing around 1,500 tonnes per day and is targeting a run rate of 80,000 to 90,000 tonnes per month as operations scale up. Returns from the newly loaded re-crushed cells are expected to begin flowing through in four to five weeks.
Pacgold Limited managing director Matthew Boyes said: “The entire team is extremely proud to have achieved our first gold production from the White Dam heap leach pad, successfully making the transition from explorer to producer. This initial production represents only a small portion of the gold we have leached to date, with the plant now running for a limited time post the completion of major refurbishment of the CIC columns and the gold room.”
Looking further ahead, Pacgold has engaged US-based Newfields engineers to design a significant pad expansion to add capacity for an additional 4 million tonnes of ore leaching. That design work is due for completion by July, after which the company will tender for construction.
Assays from the nearby Vertigo deposit resource drilling program are also due in the next two to three weeks, which will feed into an updated resource estimate and mine design as part of the broader push to full production in 2027.
For punters, the White Dam story is now well and truly open for business, with a refurbished plant, gold in the tray, crushing ramping up and re-crushed ore under irrigation.
Coupled with a pad expansion in design, Pacgold appears to be assembling the key pieces of a genuine gold producer, just as soaring gold prices are delivering exceptional margins.
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