Red 5 has awarded a mine development contract to Redpath Australia at the Darlot gold mine in Western Australia, accelerating operations for a cost of $13 million.
The 12-month contract will operate concurrently to Red 5’s own mining teams, focusing on the development of new mine areas of Burswood, Pedersen, Middle Waters South and Thompson.
The contract will involve three kilometres of rapid underground mine development and commencement began on October 1 in line with Red 5’s previously announced strategy from early August.
The Darlot mine plan and King of the Hills (KOTH) processing hub strategy came in response to a plant capacity study in August which confirmed the KOTH plant can process up to 4.7 million tonnes per annum.
Red 5 managing director Mark Williams said in August that this would transform the main function of the Darlot gold mine.
“Darlot has until now served as a central processing facility under our ‘Truck-to-Darlot’ strategy but, with the impending completion of the new state-of-the-art KOTH processing plant and its substantial latent capacity, we have a unique opportunity to treat other ore sources over and above those proposed in the KOTH mine plan,” Williams said.
Darlot has a mineral resource of 1.2 million ounces of gold and the development of new mines by Redpath could uncover even deeper resources than first realised.
Redpath may be presented with the option to extend the 12-month contract at six-month intervals and the contract will be funded by ongoing operations at Darlot.
Red 5 is expecting first gold at KOTH by mid-2022 in a build-up to production which was recently highlighted by a visit from Mines and Petroleum Minister Bill Johnston.