Eldorado Gold has commissioned a concentrate treatment plant at its Kişladağ operations at Uşak, Turkey to process flotation concentrate from the company’s Efemçukuru mine in Izmir province, Turkey.
At year-end 2011, 9,100 mt of concentrate containing approximately 25,000 oz of gold had been delivered from Efemçukuru to Kişladağ. The new plant produced doré from this feed during the first week of January 2012.
During 2012, the stockpiled concentrate will be processed along with the planned 2012 production from Efemçukuru. The underground Efemçukuru mine was commissioned and started up in the second quarter of 2011. During 2012, the Efemçukuru concentrator is scheduled to process 380,00 mt of ore at a grade of 10.12 g/mt gold. Capital expenditures at the mine for the year will total $30 million and will include $15.2 million for completion of the construction program, $7.6 million for underground capital development, and $1.8 million to construct a road to bypass a local village. Exploration will continue to focus on drill testing the Kestani Beleni northwest extension and Kokarpinar vein systems, with 12,000 m of drilling planned.
Kişladağ is a low-grade, bulk-tonnage, open-pit operation using heap leaching for gold recovery. During 2012, the mine is scheduled to place 12.5 million mt of ore on the leach pad at a grade of 1.08 g/mt gold. The 12.5 million mt is the design capacity for new equipment commissioned in 2011.
Capital spending at Kişladağ in 2012 is estimated at $175 million. Most of this is for the commencement of engineering works on an expansion project to take the processing rate up to 25 million mt/y of crushed material plus 8 million mt/y of run-of-mine material. The total cost for this project is $354 million and commissioning is expected during 2014.
Exploration at Kişladağ in 2012 will be a continuation of the 2011 geophysical surveying for deep target generation, with diamond drill testing (10,000 m) of identified targets.
