Planning success in Yellowknife to be used by Giant in Timmins

It is amazing what good planning can do for a mine.

Thanks to a new ramp, being driven this year by Giant Yellowknife Mines (the operating arm of parent Pamour Inc.) to connect all levels in the big 1,200-ton-per-day Giant mine near here, gold production will be back up to its full capacity of about 100,000 oz by 1990. In fact, general manager Ken Blower told The Northern Miner on a visit to the mine this week that all ore production should be coming entirely from underground stopes by 1992.

Present underground capacity is about 1,300-1,500 tons per day, but could be increased if desired by going to three shifts per day.

This, from a mine which has benefited over the past 15 years from the fact that one-third of the tons mined over that period came from open pits. They dot the West Bay Fault, a shear zone that hosts the Giant orebodies.

Some 68,000 tons grading 0.25 oz gold per ton will be mined from a small pit this year (the A2 pit) and another pit (the B2) is being stripped this winter. After that, pit production will taper off.

Annual production and grade at the Giant mine took a dip in the first half of the 1980s to a low of 322,000 tons at about 0.23 oz in 1986 as the mine went through a transition period to large, high- production underground stoping methods. About 80,000 oz this year

This year, it is estimated the mill will treat 364,000 tons at a grade of about 0.24 oz. Recoveries are about 87%, bringing gold production close to the 80,000-oz mark.

Without the ramp, cut and fill stope (B108) was considered to be uneconomic. It simply required too much development work from existing underground openings to make it mineable.

With some 170 relatively small ore lenses, ranging in width from 1-50 ft, scattered along a 1,400-ft strike length, stope development is a big cost item here. But since ground conditions are excellent (very few ground support measures are necessary) and since hardly any waste (about 4%) is hoisted to surface (it is used instead as stope backfill), costs are relatively low at $85 per ton, or about $429(C) per oz.

There are some 100 miles of underground openings in the Giant mine and about 5.5 miles will be added next year to bring new stopes into production.

But now the new ramp access is proving up more ore. This is done using Giant’s computerized mineral inventory, which catalogues all previous drill results. So no new drilling is needed to add to reserves. In-situ tons are up 10% to about one million. The ramp has already paid for itself. Benefits to Timmins

This is just one example of the benefits the Yellowknife division of Giant Yellowknife gets from its meticulous 5-year plan, says President David J. Emery.

This ability to accurately plan production in the Yellowknife division is just one of the things Giant hopes to use to turn its newly acquired Timmins division into a major revenue producer.

Whereas 80% of the mineral inventory at the Giant mine is planned in advance, this is the first year in its long history that the five gold mines in the Timmins division have even had a 5-year plan. Under the management of Noranda Inc., the Timmins mines have, up until now, been run on a shoestring.

Until now, Timmins has been so strapped for cash, there was no need to develop a plan to allocate funds to expansion projects. Yet the operations lend themselves well to the underground grade control measures and improved mill recovery programs that are practised at the Yellowknife division. Renewed commitment

Now, under the management of Giant Resources of Australia, which has acquired a 16% interest in Giant Yellowknife and has a 50.2% interest in Pamour Inc., the Timmins division has that cash and the commitment from management to catch up. The marriage looks like a good one.

That commitment to growth is being felt in the Yellowknife division as well, which used to be under the management of Falconbridge Ltd.

Under the umbrella of Toronto- listed ERG Resources, exploration along a 10-mile stretch of favorable geology that extends north of here, has got a real shot in the arm. That geology stretches for 150 miles up into the Courageous Lake area where Getty Mines and Noranda Inc. are actively drilling on the Tundra property. Under the direction of erg President Tony Ransom, the company has re-evaluated and re-interpretated the geology along the West Bay fault. They have brought together the geology of the mined- out areas of the Giant and the Con mine, which is located to the southwest.

“We strongly believe this is one and the same structure,” Ransom says.

In the past 18 months, some 2,000 ft of drill holes have been put down below the present workings in the Giant mine. They have intersected what Ransom believes to be the downdip extension of the ore zone. If this is true the mine may be proving up reserves of a million tons for many years to come.

And further up the North Belt zone, drilling from surface has outlined 250,000 tons grading about 0.25 oz. This deposit will probably require some underground work to be included in the company’s mineral inventory.

“We are very excited because we have both the ideological commitment and the dollar commitment from Giant Resources to do a lot of work in this area,” Mr Ransom says. This the second in a series examining the recent changes in the Pamour group of companies. Next week: a look at the company’s two tailings recovery projects.