20th Oct 2015 06:49
LONDON (Alliance News) - Aureus Mining Inc Tuesday said it has had to temporarily suspend production from the New Liberty gold mine in Liberia due to a mechanical fault with one of its crushers.
However, the company is only expecting to lose "a few days" of gold production from the fault as it has mobilised a temporary crusher and expects the problem to be fixed before the end of the month.
The mine, which only began producing this year, experienced a fault with the secondary crusher on site which led to a temporary shutdown of the process plant. A mobile crusher has been mobilised and is expected to arrive by Friday to allow crushing and processing operations to continue.
Staff and spare parts have also been mobilised to the site to get the plant back up and running. Aurues said the crusher should be fixed before the end of October.
Although the plant is out of action, mining operations have continued to increase ore stockpiles.
Initial operations at New Liberty only began in September, and the company was aiming to be in commercial production in the fourth quarter of 2015. Since then, it has produced and sold 10,000 ounces of gold.
Following the repair of the secondary crusher the company will continue to work towards declaring commercial production, and management expect that this will be achieved by year end.
New Liberty was already hampered in September when a shortage of dynamite hindered initial operations but this was quickly addressed by the company as it started operations despite heavy rains in August.
"The team at Aureus has reacted quickly to the mechanical failure of the secondary crusher, which happened last week. Though this is a challenging development during what are the early stages of the ramp up of the New Liberty gold mine to commercial production, we believe that the installation of a temporary solution whilst the secondary crusher is being repaired will result in only a few days of lost gold production," said David Reading, president and chief executive of the company.
By Joshua Warner; [email protected]; @JoshAlliance
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