Altyn PLC, Kazakhstan focussed and UK-listed mining junior has announced its results for the year ended 31 December 2019 which includes a review of the fleet it has invested in for its main Sekisovskoye gold mine following funding secured at the end of 2019 via a $17 million facility from JSC Bank Center Credit and a $10 million bond issuance on the Astana International Exchange, of which $2.6 million was taken up as at the year end. The remaining $7.4 million bond issuance is expected to resume post state quarantine.
“These funds allowed the company to purchase new machinery resulting in markedly upward revision in mining and production plans for 2020, the results of which are already visible with 29,000 t monthly production recently achieved. Production is expected to further grow this year as more equipment is delivered,” says Altyn.
The new fleet includes the following major items of equipment which have been delivered during 2020 to the Sekisovskoye mine site: a surface wheel loader model XCMG ZL50G; a surface 25 t tipper truck from Shacman plus the key underground units namely three Cat R1300 LHDs and three Cat AD30 underground trucks. In addition to the above the following equipment is on order with an expected delivery in H2 2020: face drilling rig Epiroc T1D, ring drilling rig Epiroc T1D and exploration drilling rig Epiroc Diamec U4. Further machinery and plant will be ordered in 2020 as required under the capital expenditure plan.
The ore mined at Sekisovskoye during 2019 was 255,000 t (2018: 278,000 t), though recent production results with the delivery of the new machinery has increased the rate to 29,000 t a month with the expectation that this will increase further in H2 2020 once the second batch of equipment arrives. New development of the Sekisovskoye mine was limited to maintenance work and improvement in access and ventilation. A number of orebodies that were prepared for processing in 2019 will now be rolled forward into 2020. The average gold grade was 1.76 g/t (2018:1.68 g/t) given low grade ore utilisation. The trend should reverse going forward as the majority of the throughput will now come from underground ore mining instead of the open pit.
Future development plans are dependent on raising further funding. Longer term at Sekisovskoye the plan consists in operating the mine at 850,000 t annual capacity for three years then ramping up production to 2 Mt/y over a six year period. This will be achieved by increasing the capacity of the existing processing plant to 1 Mt/y from 0.85 Mt/y for $8.4 million and constructing a new 1 Mt/y metallurgical plant and tailings dumps for $45.7 million. The 2 Mt/y production level is planned to be achieved with the development of vertical skip, cage and ventilation shafts down to the -430 masl level. As such, while the mine is being currently accessed via two declines, a capital expenditure of $204 million is planned for the life of mine underground expansion in order to develop a new vertical skip, cage and ventilation shafts as well as the associated infrastructure. A further $83.1 million is planned for new underground mining and haulage equipment.
Mining operations at the nearby Teren-Sai project are planned to include both surface and underground mining methods. The open pit mining method will make use of a suite of trucks and excavators, while underground operations will make use of the sub-level stoping mining method, similar to the underground operations at the adjacent Sekisovskoye mine. It is expected that open pit mining covers a +490 masl to +350 masl depth range while the underground mining will be conducted from +350 masl to +25 masl. The planned Teren-Sai processing plant will be a conventional carbon-in-leach (CIL) gold recovery plant, similar to the neighbouring Sekisovskoye mine process plant.
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