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REFINING THE GOLD STANDARD DIGGERS & DEALERS PREVIEW abcrefinery.com

Bardoc rises

to be centre

of attention

by Dominic Piper

nnovation is often anathema to a junior gold sector for which Lake [Resources Ltd] does it with Deflector, Wiluna [Mining
Istandardisation across exploration, mining and processing Ltd] at Wiluna and Evolution [Mining Ltd] in Queensland. All
has allowed a new generation of mines to flourish. However, of them are sending concentrate to Asia.”
at least one West Australian junior is approaching things Bardoc has signed an offtake agreement with Asian group
differently. MRI Trading for life-of-mine concentrate production.
Bardoc Gold Ltd is doing many things on its namesake “Four percent of every tonne of ore converts to the
gold project just north of Kalgoorlie in the same way peers concentrate which grades 96%,” Ryan said. “It is then sealed
have been for two decades, with a standard mix of open and shipped to Fremantle at which point the offtaker pays
pit and underground mining focused on keeping operating us. They then decide where to ship it. MRI has customers
costs down and incrementally expanding reserves and mine across Asia and its own refining facility in Malaysia.”
life. The one main difference, however, is in the flowsheet.
The decision should lower capex and deliver consistent
Instead of negotiating the fraught metallurgical challenge of
revenues from Bardoc. A March 2021 feasibility study
processing refractory ore, Bardoc will sell 54% of its life-of-
tagged Bardoc with a $177 million pre-production capex for
mine production via a gold concentrate.
a 2.1 mtpa operation capable of producing 136,000 ozpa.
“The Aphrodite orebody, our main deposit, is refractory,
Ryan said the study had not only reinforced but enhanced
there’s no hiding from that,” Bardoc managing director
the company’s belief in the project fundamentals.
Robert Ryan explained to GMJ during a recent site visit.
“We actually set out to achieve 100,000 ozpa sustainable
“We have done a multitude of metallurgical work to define
production,” he said. “We have come out of the DFS process
the best methods and found we could produce a high-grade
with a project significantly better with potential to expand.
concentrate via flotation.”
“It is definitely a straightforward project, easy to understand
Refractory ores are notoriously difficult to liberate gold from
and has scale with an eight-year mine life.”
with existing solutions expensive and/or unreliable. The
Australian gold scene is littered with the graves of junior Given it is just 40km north of Kalgoorlie – and next door to
miners who went bust having failed to make their refractory the Paddington mill – did the Bardoc team consider further
orebodies economic. innovation by doing away with a plant at all? Ryan said ore
sale and toll-treatment agreements were never a serious
Ryan said the move to concentrate production for the
consideration.
Aphrodite deposit would eliminate much of that risk.
“Not with the size of our resource, it just doesn’t make
“It means rather than spending the capex building a big
sense,” Ryan said, pointing to a 3.07 moz resource and 1
refractory process, the payabilities are high enough to make
moz reserve. “With toll-treatment, it is hard to be master of
it work,” he said.
your own destiny and, having run mills in the past, I know
It is essentially a pragmatic approach to a perennial problem
all the cards sit in the hands of the mill owner. So, having
and one that several other juniors are beginning to adopt.
the ability to build our mill is to become masters of our own
“It is becoming a more common practice,” Ryan said. “Silver destiny.”
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