Kinross Gold Corp. completed a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) for its Great Bear project, located in Red Lake, Ontario, Canada. Based on mineral resources drilled to date, the PEA outlines a high-grade combined open pit and underground mine with an initial planned mine life of approximately 12 years with production costs of $594 per ounce (oz). It expects Great Bear to produce more than 500,000 oz/y at an all-in sustaining cost (AISC) of approximately $800/oz during the first eight years through a “conventional, modest capital 10,000-metric-ton-per-day (mt/d) mill.”
Kinross also released an updated mineral resource estimate increasing the inferred resource estimate by 568,000 oz to 3.884 million oz, which is in addition to the existing measured and indicated resource estimate of 2.738 million oz.
“This PEA marks an important milestone for Great Bear and reaffirms our view of it as a high-quality asset with robust economics and a clear path to become a world class operating mine,” said Paul Rollinson, CEO of Kinross Gold. “The project represents a strong combination of high-margin production and modest capital requirements, with the opportunity for significant resource growth in the future.”
The initial mine plan outlines concurrent open pit and underground mining over the first 8 years followed by combined underground mining and stockpile processing in years 8 to 12. The company said the decision to mine the open pit and underground concurrently from the start provides significant production flexibility and time to continue exploration drilling from underground to further expand the resource and mine life.
The PEA demonstrates an initial life-of-mine of approximately 12 years with total production of approximately 5.3 million oz of gold. The open pit will be mined with a dual fleet strategy to provide selective mining of the high-grade material and lower cost mining of the waste, mining a peak of 26 million mt of material, and providing a peak of 9,000 mt/d of ore.
The combination of the open pit and underground production in the years 1 to 8 will allow for processing of higher-grade material and stockpiling of the remaining feed to supplement underground production in the latter years of the mine life. This strategy drives a milled grade of 4.6 g/mt in years 1 to 8 and an average production of 518,000 oz/y over these years.
Based on the metallurgical test results, Great Bear’s processing plant has been designed as a conventional circuit with a proposed flowsheet including semi-autogenous grinding (SAG) and ball milling, pebble crushing, gravity concentration, leaching followed by carbon-in-pulp adsorption (CIP), elution, electrowinning, and smelting to produce gold doré.
Kinross said it has invested substantial effort into early technical studies and design for tailings processing and management facilities at Great Bear leveraging the best available technologies to ensure the highest environmental standards.
As a result, the PEA design includes the addition of a desulphurization flotation circuit to remove sulphides and render the tailings non-acid generating, and a rigorous design criterion for all tailings storage facilities at the site.
As well, the LP Viggo Pit has been pulled forward to be mined during project construction in order to provide a robust in-pit tailings storage facility for the sulphide concentrate from the desulphurization flotation circuit, eliminating the need for a dam to impound the sulphide concentrate.
The total initial construction capital is forecasted at $1.2 billion. Capitalized mine development prior to commercial production is expected to be approximately $250 million, comprised of $105 million related to open pit mining and $143 million related to underground capital development which will support higher production in the early years. Most of the capitalized open pit mining is driven by the strategic decision to pull forward mining of the Viggo pit during construction to provide low-cost construction rock, early mill feed and a robust in-pit solution for the tailings concentrate.
Kinross said it is continuing to progress work in several areas across the project, for both the advanced exploration program (AEX) and the main project. Both remain subject to permitting, which continues to advance. The AEX permitting is a provincial process and Kinross is working closely with the authorities on finalizing the permits. The main project’s permitting is mainly a federal permitting review process driven by the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada (IAAC), with some provincial permitting components.
