ASX-listed Horizon Minerals’ operations remain ahead of schedule at its Boorara gold mine, 10km east of Kalgoorlie-Boulder with milling now underway at the nearby Lakewood mill and its inaugural gold pour expected next week. Horizon says ore mined to date, 80,000 tonnes at a fully diluted grade of 1.5 g/t gold, is in line with reserve modelling.
Ore haulage from Boorara to Lakewood remains well ahead of schedule with experienced local contractor Hamptons Transport initially hauling 25,000 tonnes of gold-bearing ore from Horizon’s Regal East and Regal West pits to get the party started.
The company said the first stage of mining at Boorara comprises 159,000t grading 1.86 g/t for 8,700 ounces of gold, recovered at all-in costs of $1,640 – $1,690 per ounce with regular milling and gold pours scheduled through to January next year.
Horizon appears to have timed its run perfectly as the gold price continues to hover around the A$2,600 mark. The company said earlier it expected to generate a healthy $7.1 million in free cash flow during the 2021 financial year, based on a gold price of $2,600 per ounce.
Like other savvy small-cap gold explorers, Horizon has opted for the contract mining and toll treatment route to generate early cash flows at a time of stellar gold prices, with Boorara’s stage-one gold mining operation now fully funded.
Horizon Minerals Managing Director, Jonathan Price said: “We are extremely pleased with progress at Boorara and now commencing the first milling campaign at Lakewood producing first gold next week and revenue shortly thereafter. Along with capitalising on the strong current gold price, the Stage One development of Boorara will provide mine to mill reconciliation outcomes to de-risk the larger scale development plan.”
Jon Price’s technical team at the project will continue to monitor the grade control data from the current operation, feeding the results into a proposed full-scale mining DFS, underpinned by its current contained gold resource estimate of over half a million ounces at a cut-off grade of 0.5 g/t gold.
With a phase one feasibility study less than six months old, Horizon seems set to start filling its saddlebags with Boorara gold in the next few days, just two months after initially turning the first sod.
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