Decades of work by IamGold rewarded with Westwood gold mine
There’s nothing more satisfying than advancing from the ‘development’ to the ‘production’ stage of a project and that’s exactly what IAMGOLD of Toronto experienced in July 2014 now that its Westwood Mine in Quebec has reached commercial production.
Located in the Abitibi region of the province approximately 420km northwest of Montreal and accessible year-round via paved roads, the mine is situated on a property that covers 1,925 hectares and contains 120 titles, one mining lease, one surface lease and three tailings leases.
The Westwood Project is in Bousquet Township, about 40km east of Rouyn-Noranda and 80km west of Val d’Or, a 120-km stretch in the southwestern part of the province also known for such producing and past-producing mines such as: Mouska, Doyon, Bousquet, LaRond and Lapa. The region is well serviced with high-speed internet communications, hydro-electric power, water, and an active railway line just 10km south of the Westwood Project.
Add to these features an expectation to produce on average over 180,000 ounces of gold from the Westwood Mine over an expected 19-year mine life and it’s no wonder IAMGOLD was pleased to recently announce that “Westwood is a pivotal achievement for the company” and why Company President and CEO Steve Letwin says that by hoisting ore at an average of 1,075 tonnes per day for the first 30 days of July, the project is clearly considered an operating mine and will no longer be accounted for as a development project.
In fact, Letwin says that moving from development into production was significant in many ways because it further establishes the company’s presence in the Abitibi region by adding gold totals from its 30-year legacy of underground mining in Northern Quebec.
IAMGOLD is well positioned to be one of the major players in Quebec and as Gordon Stothart, the company’s Chief Operation Officer says: “Transitioning from the successful operational history of the Doyon and Mouska mines, we expect this region to produce in the range of 100,000 to 120,000 ounces of gold for us this year, including the final production from Mouska and both commercial and pre-commercial production from Westwood.”
In support of those expectations, Stothart said the operations teams are achieving “excellent” development rates of over 1,400m per month.
From the initiation of exploration in 2002 at Westwood to December 2013, Stothart says a total of 540,484m of diamond drilling was completed during which time the overall Proven and Probable Reserves were 940,000 tonnes, 11.5 g/t, containing 348,000 ounces of gold, Measured and Indicated Resources of 1,394,000 tonnes, 11/9 g/t, containing 533,000 ounces of gold, and Inferred Resources of 9,589,000 tonnes, 10.6 g/t, containing 3,258,000 ounces of gold.
The overall resource estimate has been very stable and the average grade has steadily increased. This has given the management team a high degree of confidence in the future of this mine.
IAMGOLD expects to produce a LOM average of 165,000 to 180,000 ounces of gold per year at an average cash cost of between $630 and $690 per ounce produced.
With gold trading at nearly twice that amount, the company’s cost/ounce gives further reason for its confidence in that the Westbrook Mine will be one more reason the name IAMGOLD will be part of the Bousquet Township community and its various activities for years to come.
Now that production at the underground mine has started, processing of ore is being carried out at the nearby Doyon carbon-in-pulp (CIP) mill complex. The ore is hauled the 2km where it is crushed and ground in a circuit consisting of the existing SAG mill and a 1,000 HP ball mill.
“However,” says Stothart, “the project is split into two phases. In the first phase, only the gold mineralization is being treated at the mill. During the first year of operation, the mineralization will be processed at a rate of 700,000 tonnes per year and subsequently increased to a capacity of 800,000 tonnes. We’ve temporarily converted the copper circuit at the Mouska mill to a desulpherization circuit and the cynanide destruction capacity has been increased to treat the tailings.”
Stothart further explained that the current Mouska flotation system will be used for the copper flotation in the second phase of the project.
“Three tanks will be added to increase the retention time and the current copper concentrate thickener will be upgraded from 3.6m to 6.0m in order to meet the higher demand and a new circuit will be installed for zinc flotation,” says Stothart.
The Westwood Mine will process all of its ore at IAMGOLD’S refurbished gold plant, which operated for over 30 years to process ore from the Mouska Mine (closed in 2014) and the Doyon Mine (closed in 2009). The Doyon Mine formerly operated as an underground mine, but also as an open pit mine and at that time the plant processed in excess of 1 million tpa.
As already mentioned, the new Westwood Mine is designed to hoist between 700,000 and 800,000 tpa. The rate of ramp up to full production will take several years, with the pace of development being dependent upon the price of gold, operating cash flows and the amount of capital the company will be comfortable spending each year. With the mine still in its early days of commercial production, Westwood continues to evaluate various production profiles to optimize and get the best economic return from the processing of its mineral resource
During the ramp-up period and even at full capacity the mine will not provide enough throughput to fill the gold plant. The Westwood plant will utilize its spare capacity to process between 150,000 and 200,000 tonnes annually for Gold Bullion Development Corporation.
IAMGOLD is often thought of as a mining company with predominately low-grade open pit mines, but Westwood is different from the rest. It’s an underground mine with a long narrow lens of gold in the prolific Abitibi greenstone belt and is part of the Doyon-Bousquet-LaRonde (DBL) mining camp. The project is located within the southern Abitibi Sub-Province, in Archaean volcanic and intrusive rocks of the Bousquet Formation. The DBL mining camp hosts two world class deposits: the Doyon and LaRonde-Penna mines and is by far the largest Au-Cu-Zn-Ag producing district in Québec.
IAMGOLD brings a team with 30 years of underground mining experience to this mine and the mine development teams are already over achieving on their priority headings, another positive sign for the future of the company. The development and operations teams are achieving mine development rates over 1,400 metres per month.
As mentioned earlier, the company has been working hard to move from “development” to “production” and the Westwood Mine is proof that hard work pays.
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