Iamgold Reaches Commercial Production at Westwood
Iamgold declared commercial production
at its Westwood underground mine in the
Abitibi region of southwest Quebec on July
31. The mine hoisted ore at an average of
1,075 metric tons per day (mt/d) for the
first 30 days of July.
The Westwood mine is operated within
Iamgold’s Doyon division, which previously
operated the Doyon and Mouska mines.
Production at the Doyon mine ended in
late 2009, and production at the Mouska
mine ended in early 2014.
The Westwood mine is located 2.5 km
east of the Doyon mine. The Doyon carbonin-pulp plant has been refurbished to process Westwood ore.
Iamgold is continuing to optimize
Westwood operations. Life-of-mine production profiles under study range from
165,000 to 180,000 oz/y of gold at average
cash costs of between $630 and $690/oz.
While mine production is ramping up at
Westwood, the Doyon plant will utilize
spare capacity to process up to 192,000
mt/y of ore from the neighboring Granada
property of Gold Bullion Development Corp.
“The Westwood mine continues our
30-year legacy of underground mining in
the Abitibi region,” said Iamgold Senior
Vice President and COO Gordon Stothart.
“The development and operations teams
have worked together well and are achieving excellent mine development rates of
more than 1,400 m/month.
“From the initiation of exploration starting in 2002 to December 2013, a total of
540,484 m of diamond drilling has been
completed at Westwood, during which the
overall resource estimate has been very
stable and the average grade has steadily
increased. This gives us a high degree of
confidence in the future of this mine.”
As featured in Womp 2014 Vol 09 - www.womp-int.com