Bellevue Gold (ASX:BGL) has poured its first gold bar at its namesake project in Western Australia.
The $1.71 billion market capitalisation company says the gold bar, which was poured on 25 October in its first smelt from the Bellevue project, weighed 8.3kg.
The Bellevue Gold Project is now in its commissioning phase, with plant throughput expected to ramp up to consistent production at a nameplate processing capacity of one million tonnes per annum (Mtpa).
Bellevue has a ‘significant’ stockpile on hand, with 1115,000 tonnes of underground ore ready for processing as part of the project’s commissioning phase and an extra 85,000 tonnes of open-pit material ready for processing that’s not in the early-stage processing plan.
Meanwhile, the company continues to ramp up optimisation activities across the crushing, processing, and plant services areas for the project.
The crushing circuit has been operating at 250 tonnes per hour (tph) during the 6 days of start-up operations to date.
During the start-up period, the ball mill achieved a throughput of 125tph on an ad-hoc basis. Bellevue says this is ‘encouraging’, as this throughput achieves the design rate.
Bellevue Gold Managing Director Darren Stralow says starting production is the culmination of an ‘incredible journey’ that started as an exploration project.
“To achieve this on time and on budget is a huge feat, particularly given the skills shortage and economic climate of recent times.
“To achieve this on time and on budget is a huge feat, particularly given the skills shortage and economic climate of recent times”
This is a major credit to our construction and operations team who, alongside our key contractors, have worked tirelessly to deliver this project.”
Bellevue Gold is an ASX-listed gold producer focused on developing the ‘high-grade’ Bellevue Gold Project. The project lies in Western Australia’s Goldfields region and has a global mineral resource of 3.1 million ounces (Moz) @ 9.9 grams per tonne (g/t) gold (Au).
As of 30 June 2023, the company had $64.723 million cash and cash equivalents at hand alongside $70 million in unused finance facilities, according to its latest quarterly report.
Bellevue iis scheduled to attend the upcoming International Mining and Resources Conference (IMARC) held in Sydney from 31 October to 2 November 2023. Mining.com.au is an official media partner of IMARC, which will showcase 470-plus mining leaders and resource experts throughout 7 concurrent conferences.
Write to Aaliyah Rogan at Mining.com.au
Images: Bellevue Gold
