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Pantoro commissions new equipment to step up gold production at Nicolsons

Published: 16:23 15 Jun 2018 AEST

New ore sorter in operation
New ore sorter in operation

Pantoro Ltd’s (ASX:PNR) recently installed ore sorter and crushing circuit at the Nicolsons Project in Western Australia has been commissioned and is operating to expectation.

The ore sorter assists the site to achieve increased production by removing waste from the mill feed which is currently operating at full capacity, and replacing it with additional ore.

The new crushing circuit has demonstrated a reliable operation at about 90 tonnes per hour, which easily exceeds mill capacity with and without the ore sorter in operation.

The ore sorter has displayed expected performance in work completed to date with current sorting outcomes consistent with the test work completed prior to purchasing the unit.

Pantoro will continue to optimise the circuit and ore sorter operations in conjunction with Steinert, the equipment manufacturer.

As more material is processed through the circuit it is considered that additional fine tuning may result in further improvements to sorted ore grades.

READ: Pantoro has consistent strong gold production in March quarter

Pantoro managing director Paul Cmrlec said: “The new crushing and ore sorting facilities at Nicolsons are a fantastic addition to the processing circuit.

“The fixed crushing capacity removes the need to maintain mobile crushers on site, substantially reducing costs.

“The extensive capital investment undertaken during the quarter has placed the operation in a position to achieve production and cash generation growth targets during the coming year.”

READ: Pantoro has an upgraded gold resource as it prepares to ramp up mining and production

The company recently updated the indicated and inferred resource at its Wagtail underground mine to 574,000 tonnes at 6.8 g/t gold for 126,000 ounces.

Combined with the 370,000 ounces gold resource for Nicolsons (May 2017), Pantoro can now rapidly progress mining at Wagtail in parallel with Nicolsons.

The first development round at Wagtail Underground is expected to be undertaken early next week.

Recent drilling continues to assist with further potential upgrades for both Wagtail and Nicolsons, with the drilling returning some of the deepest high-grade intersections received to date at the project.

Cmrlec added “We remain focussed on achieving production rates of 80,000-100,000 ounces per annum during the first quarter of calendar year 2019.

“With processing upgrades in place, the focus is now squarely on ramping up production rates from both Nicolsons and Wagtail”.

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Pantoro Ltd (ASX:PNR, OTC:PNTOF) managing director Paul Cmrlec sits down with Jonathan Jackson in the Proactive studio to discuss the company’s review of its current mining strategy. The company is bringing forward the underground development at Scotia Mine within the Norseman Project in Western...

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