The Company’s 100% owned Wiluna Mining Operation hosts 91.7Mt for 7.1Moz of Mineral Resources in the Northern Goldfields of Western Australia, supported by a 2.1Mtpa processing facility, a modern 750ktpa gold concentrator, a gas-fired power station and a 300-person camp, providing the platform for a return to full-scale operations.
Initial expansionary focus ‘under the head frame’ targets high-grade gold shoots to 1,000m below surface along the Wiluna Central Mine Area, including the Wiluna Mine’s large sulphide resource (Bulletin, Happy Jack, East Lode, Woodley, Burgundy, Calvert and Essex), together with Regent and the Quartz Reef deposits at Golden Age, Galaxy and Monarch.
The Wiluna Central Mine Area hosts a JORC Mineral Resource of 6.0Moz @ 3.57g/t, comprising an underground resource of 38.37Mt @ 4.01g/t Au for 4.9Moz (including Measured & Indicated of 10.5Mt @ 4.26g/t for 1.44Moz near existing infrastructure) and an open-pit resource of 14.2Mt @ 2.38g/t Au for 1.1Moz, based on a A$3,250/oz gold price.
With an extensive history of mining and exploration, the project area contains multiple areas of interest. Wiluna has completed a review of the gold areas of interest with 13 high priority areas identified for drill testing and a further 6 larger, undertested/poorly tested areas for broad spaced air core drilling. This review is being developed into a staged drilling campaign with a focus on potential early production areas.
The Wiluna Operations are located at the northern end of the Yilgarn Craton, being one of the world’s premier gold producing areas, as such they hold significant strategic value due to their potential to provide toll treatment to other gold miners in the region. Wiluna offers large scale free milling and refractory processing capability. The mill capacity for “free-milling” oxide material stands at approximately 2.1 Mtpa while in combination with the concentrator Wiluna is also able to treat sulphide mineralisation sources at approximately 750 ktpa.
Wiluna Mining has entered into two toll treatment agreements with Western Gold Resources Limited (WGR) and BML Ventures Pty Ltd and is seeking further toll treatment agreements with other parties in the region where the Company believes that it can generate superior economics and cash flow upside relative to reprocessing its own tailings through the CIL plant.
Wiluna’s restart plan combines underground and open-pit operations, and in time, tailings retreatment and toll-treatment feed sources, leveraging the company’s existing infrastructure including the modern gold concentrator to expedite a rapid return to mining of the multi-million-ounce Mineral Resource.
Low strip-ratio open pits will provide supplementary ore feed to support a 2.1 Mtp production rate while underground operations are re-established at 750ktpa.
As part of the ongoing planning around operational readiness to facilitate the potential restart of mining operations, Wiluna’s management team has identified the underground offset extension of the Golden Age, a free milling opportunity amenable to early extraction. Wiluna has prepared a phased development plan which seeks to re-enter underground workings, complete the required underground rehabilitation to undertake a dedicated grade control drilling program of ~4,200 metres to support the potential development of an Ore Reserve and detailed financial analysis. The re-entry and rehabilitation scope of works represent a low-risk restart opportunity for Wiluna that is designed to derisk the future larger restart plans for underground mining at the Wiluna Project.
