Westgold Resources has announced that the Fender gold deposit will be its next underground mine in the Cue area of Western Australia.
Fender is located 3.5 kilometres south of Westgold’s Big Bell mine and will become the third underground mine feeding the company’s 1.4 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) Tuckabianna processing hub.
“Fender is the next underground mine planned to leverage Westgold’s existing infrastructure in the Cue region,” Westgold executive director Wayne Bramwell said.
“It will initially produce at a rate of 300,000 – 350,000tpa, is a simple and low cost development and will leverage the existing Big Bell infrastructure approximately 3.5 kilometres to the north.”
Fender was historically mined by Normandy in the 1990s, with Westgold completing a cut-back during 2020 to bring the pit to 100 metres vertical depth.
Its life of mine open pit totals 402,000 tonnes at 1.96 grams a tonne (g/t) gold for 25,300 ounces.
The last 20 metres of the pit revealed continuous lodes of higher-grade ore, which have been confirmed by deeper drilling beneath the pit.
The stratigraphy and structural setting at Fender is similar to that of Big Bell, where strike-slip movement on the layered meta-sediments have created dilational-jog zones, which manifest as higher-grade ore shoots plunging steeply to the north.
Fender will be developed as an underground mine supported by the extensive surface infrastructure and technical teams available at the proximate Big Bell mine.
Westgold intends for mining to commence at Fender during the second half of the 2022 financial year.
“With Big Bell approaching full capacity we have an excess of ore sources that can feed our Tuckabianna processing hub,” Bramwell said.
“With Fender coming online in financial year 2022 Westgold can now sequence our project pipeline including Shocker – 1600, the Black Swan Group targets, Golden Crown and Great Fingall and begin to consider options to establish a fourth processing hub.”
Fender represents the next in a line of near-term development targets around Cue that underpin Westgold’s expansion plans.