Kaiser Reef eyes doubling of mine production at A1

Having already established profitable gold production from its A1 Mine in the March quarter, Kaiser Reef now expects to achieve a doubling in mine production after completing a number of improvements.

The significant debottleneck and infrastructure improvements – supported by a power upgrade, further underground remote mining fleet purchases, improved ventilation infrastructure and accessing of ore bodies developed over the previous quarter – have already allowed the company to increase mine production.

And the works are clearly substantial enough that Kaiser Reef (ASX:KAU) is now targeting monthly ore mining rates of between 4,000t and 5,000t – up from the current rate of 2,000t to 2,500t per month.

Nor do the improvements stop there.

Very recent drilling has returned exceptional results including 4.4m @ 118 g/t gold from 25.4m, 1.75m @ 53.8 g/t gold from 40.9m, 15.20m @ 3.01 g/t gold from 51.4m and 0.25m @ 2,006 g/t gold from 66.65m which bodes very well for the ongoing exploration and mine development and recent modernisation and automation of have just been commissioned at the Maldon processing plant, which is now semi-automated and recently achieved reported production rates exceeding 200,000 tonnes per annum hard rock ore.

Recoveries have also stabilised consistently above 96% and the mill is now more stable and operates with reduced unit costs due to the efficiency improvements.

Along with prior mill improvements that it completed such as the upgrading of the SAG milling circuit, with a new SAG discharge hopper, and a rolling replacement of structural and mechanical parts of the leaching circuit, the company will now focus on improving production and margins.

During the March 2023 quarter, Kaiser sold 3,376oz of gold at an average price of $2,807/oz to deliver revenues of $9.48m against total costs of $8.09m.

Mill upgrades

Since the beginning of 2022, the company has carried out a major project to modernise the SAG milling operation to ensure the plant could be operated and maintained more effectively with the fourth and final stage completed in the last week of May 2023.

The first stage was the redesign and replacement of the SAG discharge hopper and pump in May 2022 while the second was the redesign of the SAG Mill lining system with supplier Growth Steel creating a design, that improved wear life of the liners, increased the grinding efficiency of the mill and significantly reduced gold hold up between and behind the liners.

The third stage was the installation of the new PLCs, replacing the obsolete controllers that were installed in the mid 1980s which was followed by replacement of the old hydrocyclones.

All this work has reduced the startup/shutdown times and delivered a 20% increase in throughput per shift, a reduction in grind size from 125 micron to 75 micron that has delivered significant increases in grinding and classification efficiencies, a reduction in power and reagent costs, and significant safety improvements.

This article was developed in collaboration with Kaiser Reef, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.