News

June 30, 2009

CGA Mining Accelerates Its Production Ramp Up At Masbate, While Segilola Looks Like Another Potential Winner

By Charles Wyatt

So Mike Carrick of CGA Mining has achieved his aim of bringing the Masbate gold project in the Philippines into production. The first shipment of dore gold went out in the last week of May, and has gone to Metalor Technologies in Switzerland, the refiner appointed for the project. First gold was poured at the beginning of May, which was a little behind schedule, but this is in the nature of such operations and only a pedant would carp. Leighton Contractors, Australia’s leading mining contractor, was on a fixed price contract to build the 4.1 million tonnes per year plant, and having done that it now switches to its role as mining contractor. Everything is proceeding to plan.

According to Mike it should now be possible to expand throughput to 6.5 million tonnes per year in short order, and he wants to take advantage of the gold price which is now double what it was when the feasibility study was carried out. At the moment a single ball mill and a SAG mill are treating 500 tonnes per hour, but CGA is in the fortunate position of having a twin ball mill in reserve, and this will be brought into operation next month. Once this starts to operate, and reaches ...