Production
In 2022, we produced 5.96 million tonnes of ore from our underground mines, 1.63 million tonnes from our surface cushing and processed 7.60 millon tonnes of ore through our ore processing plant, a new record. Our metal recovery results were 82 per cent copper and 67.7 per cent gold.
New records for mill production of 7.604MTpa were achieved as a result of continuous improvement projects.
The year saw the planned decline of the E48 Block Cave with E26L1N now having replaced E48 as the primary ore source. Planning to extract ore from E26L1N SLC 5 and 6, E31 and E31 Open Pits progressed through the year, as supplementary ore sources to E26L1N in the years to come.
Manager – Ore Processing Mitch Garside said “For 2023, the crushing circuit continues to be our primary focus to achieve production rates, and the team has already identified further opportunities for optimisation.”
Scheduled maintenance was completed across site, both underground and on the surface, with multiple shutdowns carried out in line with our preventative maintenance program. Maintaining our assets properly requires planned downtime in order to perform repairs, upgrades and to conduct monitoring activities. Such scheduled maintenance ensures our mine and mill will continue to operate safely and efficiently for many years to come.
E26L1N Block cave successful cave establishment and transition into production
In the first quarter of the year the E26 L1N Block Cave development project was successfully completed, 5 months ahead of schedule. Throughout the year work has continued to successfully and safely managed the early establishment of the cave. Mr Sun (CMOC CEO), in his 2023 ‘New Year Address’ praised the delivery of E26 L1N block cave as; “the first step in NPM’s transition to a new development era.” This acknowledgement from our CEO highlights the significance of this achievement for Northparkes and CMOC. As we look back on 2022, we are very pleased to observe that; the cave has grown as planned, production has exceeded expectations, and the risk of an airblast event has been expertly controlled. It has been a very successful year and commendable achievement as we celebrate the establishment of our primary block cave mine, E26L1N.
