North of 60 Mining News - The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

Northern Star Resources Ltd. Oct. 19 reported that its Pogo Mine in Alaska produced 61,817 ounces of gold during the third quarter of calendar year 2023. Over the first nine months of this year, Pogo poured 192,918 oz of gold, putting the company's only operation outside of Australia on pace to top 250,000 oz in 2023.

Since completing an expansion of the Pogo mill to 1.3 million metric tons per year in 2022, Northern Star has been working to ramp up gold output at the high-grade underground mine to 300,000 oz per year.

Calander year 2023 got off to a bit of a slow start due to a damaged motor that put the mill out of commission for three weeks. Despite this setback, the operation produced 49,779 oz during the first quarter.

Pogo bounced back during the second quarter – producing 81,322 oz of gold during the three-month period ending in June, the highest quarterly output in recent years.

Third-quarter production, however, dropped 24% due to a drop in both mill throughput and gold grades.

During the third quarter, the Pogo mill processed 318,811 metric tons of ore averaging 6.9 grams per metric ton gold, compared to 347,524 metric tons of ore averaging 7.7 g/t gold in the previous quarter.

While the Pogo mill operated right at expanded nameplate capacity during the third quarter, even with scheduled shutdowns for maintenance, the throughput was about 8% lower than the previous three-month period.

The larger contributor to the lower gold output, however, was the 10% drop in ore grades.

Considering that, as of the end of March, Pogo hosted 5.9 million metric tons of proven and probable reserves averaging 8.6 g/t (1.6 million oz) gold, there is room to bolster ore grades being fed into the mill.

Northern Star says a continued focus on grade optimization through productivity initiatives is expected to drive this improvement.

The Australia-based gold miner is also seeking to lower the all-in sustaining cost to produce an ounce of gold at Pogo, which was US$1,438 during the third quarter. One way to get the per-ounce production price down is to spread operation costs over more ounces, as is evidenced by the US$1,254 per oz gold production during the previous quarter. Another way is to reduce the overall mining costs, which the Pogo team is working on.

"During [a] visit to Pogo during the quarter, it was evident that the team are proactively identifying opportunities to improve productivity and drawback costs across all departments," Northern Star Resources Managing Director Stuart Tonkin told investors during the company's quarterly conference call.

Total costs at Pogo were 12% lower during the third quarter than the previous three-month period, reflecting success in Northern Star's longer-term goal to operate Pogo at a significantly lower cost base.

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Shane Lasley, Publisher

Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.

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