Hill meets expectations

PERTH-BASED gold miner Hill 50 Gold NL produced 45,277 ounces of gold for the June quarter from its operations in the Mt Magnet area of the Murchison goldfields in WA.

The company’s quarterly report indicated that, while production was up 14 per cent on the previous quarter, operating cash costs increased by 19 per cent to $335 per ounce.

After the wash-out in the previous quarter, operations performed within the board’s expectations for the quarter.

The underground mines were strong contributors with the Hill 50 underground mine continuing to increase in grade within the virgin northern lodes.

The average grade from Hill 50 was more than 5.0 grams/tonne gold and, more importantly, an increasing trend in each month of the quarter resulted in the grades in June averaging 6.0g/t gold.

The Star underground mine – located on the western margin of the Lennon-ville Fault in the same area – continued its intensive level development campaign to set the mine up for stoping the smaller blocks, following the decision in the previous quarter to abandon bulk long-hole open stoping.

Hill 50 managing director Peter Cook said it would appear from simple analysis that Star was producing at an annual rate of 500,000 tonnes.

“However, it should be noted that over 30 per cent of the Star production came from development during the quarter,” Mr Cook said.

“This is disproportionate to that which would be typical in the normal cycle.

“This is a function of setting the smaller stopes (post bulk stoping abandonment) to contribute a regular and increased ore flow.”