Gold Road’s pre-Diggers & Dealers mine site visit to the Gruyere gold project proved a hit for the 50-plus investors, analysts and media who braved a chilly and windy day in the north-eastern Goldfields to view construction progress at Australia’s next world-class gold mine.
It was well after the 1 1/2-hour Sunday morning flight from Perth landed at Gruyere’s newly built airstrip before the beanies and gloves came off the assembled crowd, the skies turned blue and the winter sun was allowed to shine through.
Construction of Gruyere, being developed in a 50-50 joint venture between Gold Road and Gold Fields, started in 2017 and covers a total area of 144 square kilometres.
Once off the plane what followed was a hands-on description of work in progress by senior executives of 50-50 joint venture partners Gold Road and Goldfields of Australia’s largest under-development gold project. Gruyere is now 61 per cent complete and on track to deliver its first gold early in the June 2019 quarter.
Visitors en route to Diggers and Dealers Aug 6-8 were told construction of the 7.5 million tonnes-per-year project was well under way, with much of the infrastructure — including long lead time items — required to sustain production of 270,000 ounces of gold annually over 13 years in place.
During morning tea tour attendees were also treated to an update by John Donaldson, general manager of geology for Gold Road on work to date across its broader Yamarna Greenstone Belt exploration project.
Yamarna is one of Australia’s largest green fields gold exploration projects, where a $23 million exploration budget is in place for 2018.
The strategy at Yamarna is simple, says Donaldson: To discover and develop world class gold mines.
Exploration is focused on defining deposits that support the next standalone 1 million ounce operation on 100 percent Gold road-owned ground.
Gold Road has divided its tenements into three delineated hubs. First is Gruyere followed by the wholly-owned Northern Hub, which includes the Ibanez and Bloodwood targets .
The Southern hub, also 100 percent owned by Gold Road, takes in the Smokebush, Toppin Hill ad Wanderrie targets.
It is worth noting the ore reserve for Yamara was recently increased by 6.3 percent to 97.35 tonnes at 1.2 g/t gold for 3.74 million ounces of gold.
Gold Road managing director Ian Murray will present at Diggers & Dealers on Tuesday at 3.20pm.
