Kaiser Reef plots golden growth path for Vic, Tassie mines
Brought to you by BULLS AND BEARS
Michael Busbridge
Profitable gold producer Kaiser Reef used the strong gold price to fuel growth; It has laid out a clear strategy to increase gold production, extend mine life and unlock regional scale-up at the company’s Henty mine in Tasmania and its Victorian operations at Maldon.
The company’s plans focus on extracting more ounces from existing infrastructure while methodically rebuilding exploration momentum in some of Australia’s most established gold fields. The entire study will be funded from operating cash flow, Kaiser says.
At its flagship Henty gold mine in Tasmania, the company plans to increase production rate by 16 per cent to 35,000 ounces from 2027, thanks to site optimization and ore access. The high-grade mine currently has a resource of 4.1 million tonnes, grading 3.3 grams gold per tonne and 438,000 ounces of gold.
The mine was initially projected to have a five-year life but has continued to operate, producing more than 1.3 million ounces of gold since its opening in 1996.
‘Kaiser has become a profitable gold miner in the last nine months.’
Kaiser Reefs general manager Brad Valiukas
Despite a long history of ownership changes, exploration potential remains excellent, with new veins and extensions being discovered regularly.
The prospective six-kilometre-long mineralized corridor extending to the southwest includes older workings such as the Tyndall copper mine and the Newton Lake alteration zone.
Kaiser Reefs general manager Brad Valiukas said: “Over the last nine months, Kaiser has transformed into a profitable gold miner with a solid balance sheet and a strong pipeline of exploration and development opportunities. We are well positioned to both benefit from a strong gold price and add significantly further value to our assets through targeted investment.”
Kaiser says it is pursuing a dual strategy at its Maldon gold project in Victoria, increasing production from low-grade stocks and opening the Union Hill underground mine, while advancing its regional-scale exploration program by identifying new priority drilling targets.
The high-quality project comes with a fully operational gold processing facility with a capacity of 200,000 tonnes per annum and has a historic gold production of 1.75 million ounces at a remarkable 28 g/t.
Other work will include re-establishing facilities at Union Hill and enabling the company to focus on drilling positions for the underground ore definition program in the September quarter. Although the Union Hill mine is currently under maintenance and repair, it still hosts a resource of 186,000 ounces grading 4.4 g/t gold.
Recent diamond drilling has intersected a number of standout hits including a run of 5.8 meters grading 5.37 g/t gold from 39 metres, 6.9 meters at 6.05 g/t gold from 30 metres, and 8.6 meters at 4.99 g/t gold from 18.4 metres.
Drilling successfully demonstrated grade continuity, identified mineralization in undrilled portions of the pit, and confirmed the presence of high-grade spur veins.
Kaiser Reef is also turning former gold waste dumps near its Union Hill mine into cash. In a trial run of 3,567 tonnes of waste material, the average gold per tonne (g/t) was 1.6 grams, and the company achieved a 90 percent recovery rate. This is a big improvement over the previous trial sample of 2628 tonnes which graded 0.86 g/t; This indicates that there may be even more positive developments in reprocessing.
For now, the Kaiser’s jewel in the crown is the very profitable Henty gold mine. Finally having the cash to pursue meaningful exploration across two operations, the company appears well-positioned to add more ounces to its already impressive portfolio of assets.
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