Business Chief APAC+ANZ Magazine October 2017 | Page 75

Golden opportunities
New infrastructure
MINING for the Gross mine . “ Nordgold ’ s big milestones from my perspective were the commissioning of Bissa and Bouly , and obviously now we ’ re looking forward in the next year to the commissioning of Gross ,” he explains .

Golden opportunities

The construction of Gross will be Nordgold ’ s third greenfield project developed from exploration to production , following the successful launch of the Bissa and Bouly mines . “ It ’ s a greenfield with aspects of a brownfield . There is existing infrastructure there but we ’ re basically rebuilding it all as a separate mine . It ’ s clean and easy in the fact that we haven ’ t had to pioneer there ,” advises Wilcox .
Located in Yakutia , Gross is not Nordgold ’ s first foray into Russia ’ s Far Eastern region . “ Gross is very close to the neighboring Neryungri mine , which was acquired by Nordgold in 2007 . It was one of the initial acquisitions and Gross is a neighboring ore body to the Neryungri mine ,” Wilcox adds .
system , much construction work has taken place at the Gross mine . “ We are constructing a 1,000-man camp , 10-bay truck workshop and a gold processing plant . Our output will be on average 230,000 ounces per year over the 17-year life of mine . The gold mine itself is a 12mn ton per annum heap leach ,” says Wilcox .
“ It ’ s a primary gyratory Metso crusher 50 / 65 leading up to two GP 500 Metso cone crushers . Primary and secondary crushing are then followed by approximately 3.5km of overland conveyors to our leach pad . The leach pad itself is retreat stacking

New infrastructure

As part of the new infrastructure
A huge Nordgold mining truck
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