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Gold/Mining/Energy : Mining News of Note -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LoneClone who wrote (34776)	3/27/2009 3:00:10 PM
From: LoneClone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 194043

First commercial gold from under Johannesburg mid-2009 miningweekly.com By: Martin Creamer 25th March 2009 JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The first commercial gold from under the Golden City of Johannesburg was on track for mid-2009, the London- and Johannesburg-listed Central Rand Gold said on Wednesday. Central Rand Gold chairperson Alastair Walton said that there would thereafter be a gradual build up of production to a level 100 000 oz/y by the end of 2009, requiring a capital expenditure (capex) programme. Walton said that there was still sufficient cash from the November 2007 initial public offering (IPO) and from revenue earned during the course of 2009 to fund the capex programme. The company would also be converting more of its resources to reserves, in its transformation from explorer to miner. Central Rand Gold CEO Johan du Toit said that trial mining, begun on October 1 at Slot 8 of Consolidated Main Reef, had made it possible to convert resources to reserves by affirming the company’s mining and metallurgical processes, physically testing its backfilling techniques, and refining its metallurgical processes. Initial ore throughputs were lower than expected owing to a proliferation of clay, but a new flotation unit was commissioned, enabling the recovery rate to increase “dramatically”. Once the carbon-in-leach (CIL) plant had been commissioned, total recoveries were expected to rise to some 80%. The CIL plant, which had the capacity to treat 10 000 t/m of concentrate, would be commissioned in April. Similarly, an additional 30 t/h crushing and concentrating plant would be commissioned in May. Sampling of trial mining was under way, including analysis of the various size fractions and flotation test work on the tailings, and underground trial mining would commence in the second quarter of 2009, at a rate of around 12 000 t/m of ore.