Vancouver- Undeterred by heavy rainfall in western Australia, Crescent Gold (CRA-T, CRE-A) says it is about three weeks away from starting production at its Laverton gold project.
“If everything goes according to plan, we can anticipate a production startup by late January,” said Renee Brickner, a Vancouver-based spokeswoman for Crescent Gold.
The company said a rain storm that occurred on January 3 had only a minimal impact on construction and grade control drilling. Now that roads to the mine site are accessible and a new a new ore crusher will be delivered soon, the company expects to be producing gold at a rate of 90,000 oz. annually within the next 12 months.
The Laverton mine is located within a gold belt about 280 kilometres northeast of Kalgoorlie.
The mine is actually an umbrella name for a series of pits. The richest of nine deposits identified so far is called the Sickle and contains 2.2 million tonnes of material averaging 2 grams per tonne.
The company’s game plan is to achieve its production targets using conventional gravity and carbon-in-pulp processing methods at a cost of around US$436 an oz.
Since gold was trading on the spot market for US$612 an oz this week, the mine is expected to be highly profitable.
Crescent is proceeding to startup after recently securing A$25 million in project funding from Investec Bank (Australia), which included a A$20 million project gold loan with a A$5 million cost overrun facility, and a A$5 million cash loan to purchase gold puts.
The facility also includes oil price caps designed to protect the company’s operating costs from an oil price spike over the next two years.
“We have secured an average minimum price of A$855 an oz for 190,000 oz. of production out of [probable ore] reserves of 358,000 oz.,” said Crescent Managing Director Andrew Haythorpe in a recent press statement.
Shares of Crescent closed unchanged at 28 cents in Toronto, January 10
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