Detour Gold Reworks its Mine Plan


Detour Gold has announced a new life-ofmine plan for its Detour Lake property in northeast Ontario. The company initiated production from the Detour Lake open pit in January 2013 and poured its first gold on February 18, 2013. Commercial production was declared in September 2013.

From 2013 to the end of 2015, the Detour Lake mine produced 1.2 million oz of gold from 49 million mt of ore processed at an average grade of 0.85 g/mt gold.

Detour Gold’s new mine plan calls for near-term development of the relatively shallow West Detour deposit immediately west of the currently mined Detour Lake open pit, along with processing of fines from low-grade stockpiles, beginning at a rate of 1 million mt/y in 2019. Mill throughput will increase from 56,000 mt/d to 63,000 mt/d in 2019. Mining at West Detour will allow deferral of some stripping required for mining the Detour Lake open pit.

Based on current mineral reserves, the Detour Lake operation has a remaining mine life of 23 years, with West Detour having an operating life of about 10 years from 2018 to 2028. Life-of-mine gold production will average an estimated 655,000 oz/y from 2016 through 2038, including 617,000 oz/y from 2016 through 2018.

Life-of-mine total site costs are estimated at $690/oz of gold produced. Lifeof- mine capital costs are estimated at C$1.1 billion.

Proven and probable reserves on the Detour property, including low-grade fines, now total 16.4 million oz of contained gold in 514 million mt at a combined grade of 0.99 g/mt gold.

Current mining at Detour is based on conventional open-pit mining methods, and mining at West Detour is planned to use the same methods.


As featured in Womp 2016 Vol 03 - www.womp-int.com