The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Steady mill throughput bolsters Northern Star's Alaska mine North of 60 Mining News - January 24, 2024
With the mill running above nameplate capacity, 66,655 oz of gold were poured Pogoduring the final three months of 2023.
Northern Star Resources Ltd. Oct. 19 reported that its Pogo Mine produced 66,655 ounces of gold during the final three months of calendar year 2023, which lifted the Alaska operation's output for the year to 259,573 ounces.
"The Pogo team are enduring negative 40-degree days in Alaska but have maintained strong momentum in operational improvements with quarterly gold sales of 66,000 ounces and an all-in-sustaining costs of US$1,367 an ounce," Northern Star Resources Managing Director Stuart Tonkin said of the company's only operation outside of Australia.
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 ounces per year.
Reaching this gold production target is premised on feeding ore through the mill at around its nameplate capacity of 325,000 metric tons per quarter and improving the grade of ore being processed.
Aside from the first three months of 2023, which was impacted by a six-week shutdown of the mill for repairs, the mill at Pogo ran near or above its nameplate capacity last year.
During the final three months of the year, 355,611 metric tons of ore averaging 6.7 grams per metric ton gold was processed through the mill, compared to 318,811 metric tons of ore averaging 6.9 g/t gold during the previous quarter.
While the mill exceeded nameplate capacity during the fourth quarter, the grades are not yet to the levels to achieve Northern Star's longer-term gold production goals for Pogo.
"So, lifting that average grade up is where we're going to get that uplift in the revenue," Tonkin told analysts and investors during a Jan. 23 call.
According to a calculation completed early last year, Pogo hosts 5.9 million metric tons of proven and probable reserves averaging 8.6 g/t (1.6 million oz) gold, which leaves room to bolster ore grades being fed into the mill.
Northern Star says the solution to increasing grades is mining more high-quality ore from underground stopes, which will reduce ore grade dilution.
During the final three months of 2023, the mine delivered 218,000 metric tons of stope ore, which accounts for about 62% of total ore processed.
"The percentage of stoping to development was [a] bit down on the quarter, but ultimately it's around getting higher quality tons through that plant to get 300,000 ounces," Tonkin said.
Northern Star's goal for Pogo is to have stope ore account for 70% of the mill feed.
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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