Project Description
Jiangle County, Fujian (Province), People’s Republic of China
Introduction
The gold mine is owned and run by Yazhou Huangjin, an international gold mining business with its headquarters in the People's Republic of China.
The technical report on the Fujian Project gold mine was created by Yazhou Huangjin to offer an updated summary of the geology and mineralization, mineral resources, and mineral reserves, as well as mine and mill operations. The report's data and information were obtained from the gold mine at the Fujian Project. In order to support the creation of this report, the research involved reviewing pertinent geological, mining, process, and metallurgical data in full precision.
The research and development phase for the Fujian open pit and underground gold mine began in 2015. The processing facility, tailing filter plant, paste fill plant, tailings storage area, waste rock dump, water treatment plant, sedimentation ponds, and administrative buildings are all considered surface facilities. Long-hole and standard mechanized cut and fill mining techniques are used to mine ore. A flotation concentrate made from processed ore is sold to refiners.
Property Description and Location
The Fujian Project is a mixed open pit and underground gold mining project that started operating in 2015. Its facilities include a water treatment plant, an underground crushing plant, a milling and flotation plant, a filtration and paste backfill plant, and other ancillary buildings.
The mine is positioned in a region of the world known as the subtropics, which has mild winters and warm, dry summers. The mine is situated in China's south-eastern Fujian province. From Jiangle County to the national route J011 in the northwest, there are roughly 28 km of paved roads that lead to the mine site.
In Jiangle County, there are about 148,234 people living. The facility needs 64 m3 of water per hour, which is provided by on-site water treatment and is mostly derived through subterranean dewatering and site collection ponds. A 29.5 kV transmission line, 11 km in length, was built in 2016 and given to the electrical authority to transmit power from the national grid.
Mine Main Access Road
As of December 2015, the land used for the Fujian Project covered a total area of 1261.49 acres. International mining law states that the company is indeed entitled to explore and develop any mineral resources that are present in the area as long as the required charges and taxes are applied. Approximately 75% of the 173.5 ha operating area is made up of forestry land, while 2% is made up of treasury property. The Project holds all of the necessary permits, and none are currently needed. The breadth of the current operational requirements includes all infrastructure needed to function under the reserves stated in this report.
Geology and Mineralization
The Fujian Project is a gold deposit following the Carlin style. The mine is expected to grow to be one of the largest documented examples of a gold deposit in the Carlin style in southeast China. A network of interrelated main faults is where the gold resource for the Fujian Project is located.
The Middle Triassic Xuman Formation's shale and sandstone are replaced by dispersed pyrite, arsenical pyrite, and arsenopyrite, which is also present in the nearby wall rock at the fault's border. The gold is fairly evenly distributed throughout the deposit because it is found on the rims of fine-grained pyrite and arsenopyrite grains. Numerous similarities exist between this type of mineralization and the Carlin style deposits that were first discovered inside significant gold mining operations.
The mineralized zone at the Fujian Project is 550m long, 7.5 to 21.7m wide, and has been investigated all the way down to a depth of 740m vertically below the surface. It is possible to efficiently mine the Fujian Project deposit using both open pit and underground techniques because the controls on mineralization are sufficiently studied.
Both the Project development teams and the regional exploration teams are aware of the deposit's essential characteristics. The third of several compressive deformation episodes observed at the Fujian Project was when gold mineralization took place, or very soon after. The exploration teams are constantly studying the connection between the host structure and the gold mineralization.
Project Infrastructure
For Life of Mine (LOM) purposes, the Project infrastructure is effectively established. The Tailings Management Facility's extra pond and already existing ponds will be used to manage the site's water. The water treatment facility is big enough to accommodate the new facilities.
The newly built areas will be properly ditched and slanted to integrate with the current systems. The warehouse and office buildings are examples of ancillary structures that will continue to be used. For the staff that will work in the mill, a new changing facility will be built.
Workforce
Mining contractors in China have a solid skill foundation. The mining contractor at the Fujian Project is a subsidiary of one of the leading construction firms in China and has experience working on a variety of civil construction and earthmoving projects.
Experienced underground miners from the company's prior operations will make up the majority of the underground mining personnel. The operators of the processing plants will be chosen from a pool of workers with adequate expertise, many of whom have degrees in chemical engineering and metallurgy. There are not many operators in China with mining sector experience, but foreigners will supply the knowledge and educate the staff. Administrative and accounting expertise, as well as maintenance expertise, are both easily accessible in China.
Less than 4% of the workforce is composed of outsiders, making the intended workforce composition of 96% locals. Yazhou Huangjin plans to give preference to personnel from the Fujian Province and has set a goal of having 60% of the workforce come from within the area.
Interpretation and Conclusions
The Fujian mine completed construction and commissioning successfully and generated 6,060 ounces of gold in the quarter ending in May 2018. The underground mine has started development, and the open pit mine is continuing to expand.
Currently, it is anticipated that the Fujian mine will produce between 55,000 and 65,000 ounces of gold a year. The Fujian Project operation is anticipated to initially consist of gold production of 110,000 ounces per year by 2026 once the ramp-up of production is complete.
The Fujian mine has a proven track record, and the technical study's findings show that the estimations of the Project's mineral resources and reserves and its economics are well-defined enough to show that the Project is both technically and economically feasible. The report's contents are highly trusted by trained professionals.
The technical analysis provides a thorough technical and financial evaluation of the mining operation for the Fujian Project. It is recommended to conduct additional research to better optimize and improve operations:
- Keep up drilling programs in the area in search of supplementary vein systems close to striking and other targets;
- Research thin-structure mining methods for narrow veins;
- Investigate ore sorting and dense media separation to minimize dilution;
- Continue researching methods to improve the gold concentrate.