ST IVES GOLD MINE
Producing more than 350,000 ounces of gold each year, the St Ives Gold Mine is one of Australia’s leading gold producers.
The mine is located near Lake Lefory, in the historic gold-producing Eastern Goldfields region of Western Australia. It is about 80 kms south of Kalgoorlie and 630kms east of Perth
Gold Fields acquired the St Ives Mine from WMC Resources in 2001, which is situated on the Norseman-Wiluna Greenstone Belt, forming part of the Yilgarn Craton in WA. It is a highly mineralised granite-greenstone terrain with world-class deposits of gold and nickel.
St Ives Gold Mine staff predominately comprise of locals who reside in the area, with employees either living in Kambalda or Kalgoorlie.
Mining Operations
With the first major gold mining expedition commencing in the mid-1980s, St Ives has produced in excess of 10.5 million ounces of gold.
The continued exploration success and drilling of the mine’s extensive greenfields project pipeline has consistently led to further discoveries and new mines.
The mine features both underground and surface mining, as well as SAG Mill and CIP technology, the site supports more than 1000 staff and contractors.
Invincible Deposit
The discovery of an impressive high-grade deposit, which was mined as an open pit and is now an underground mine, is the most significant discovery in St Ives’ history and possibly that of the WA goldfields community.
The sheer size of the deposit earnt it the name, ‘Invincible’.
Located 8km from the Lefroy Mill, the lode thickness varies from less than 1 metre to more than 20 metres in the thicker portions of the orebody. It has been defined for nearly 2km in strike length, 350m wide and 160m deep.
The exciting discovery resulted in the start of open pit mining in January 2015, with the Invincible Underground project commencing in November 2017.
Captured below is the Drake portal being blasted. This was filmed by the mining team’s Go-Pro. The portal went off with a ‘bang’, as did the team’s Go-Pro, which was launched and recovered from the middle of the pit.
Processing Plant
The St Ives processing plant has a capacity of approximately 4 million tonnes per annum treating oxide, transitional and fresh ore from the Invincible, Hamlet and Neptune underground and open pit mines.
The plant is made up of a single stage gyratory crushing circuit, a single stage 13MW SAG mill (SSSC) grinding circuit, gravity recovery including two 40” Knelson concentrators and a Gekko In-line Leach reactor, five Leach and a six-stage carousel Carbon-in-pulp (CIP) circuit, Split AARL elution circuit and a thickened in-pit tailings storage facility.