Holland sweet on Granny Smith
Gold Fields chief executive Nick Holland has flagged a shift in mining technique at Granny Smith to handle orebody grades that are set to rise 25 per cent.
In an upbeat presentation to the Denver Gold Forum this week, Mr Holland raved about the early success of improving WA mines acquired from Barrick Gold for $US270 million last year.
He said Granny Smith "has been the star performer", with output last quarter of 85,000oz at all-in costs of $US690/oz . "We think there is tremendous upside potential there," he said.
"It has surpassed all our expectations. It continues to get better at depth.
"We are now asking ourselves can we increase the extraction ratio. Given we're doing a room and pillar mining technology, we are only extracting about 55 per cent of the ore body.
"When you're getting up to 8g or 9g (a tonne), we want all of it. So we are doing a study right now to see if we can move to past fill."
Mr Holland said Darlot was "showing very promising potential" of being able to achieve Gold Fields' targets.
Mr Holland also touched on the 1.3 million ounce Invincible deposit at St Ives.
He said an open pit would mine the first 500,000oz, at 4gpt, and Invincible could "get a lot bigger".
"For us to have an open pit at St Ives at 4gpt is something different because on average we've been mining 1.5gpt to 1.7gpt (underground)," he said.
