Canadian precious metals miner New Gold has achieved commercial production at its Rainy River mine in Ontario, a company official said Monday.
The open-pit mine is expected to reach its nameplate 21,000 mt/d capacity by the end of December, Julie Taylor, director of investor relations and communications for the Toronto-based company, said in an interview, adding the mine's ramp-up should be quick.
"We're about 60% of nameplate capacity now, and we'll probably hit 100% by the end of the year," she said, adding "we're doing it on a consistent basis with no glitches."
Rainy River, about 40 miles northwest of Fort Frances, Ontario, is one of the company's five producing assets. The others are New Afton in British Columbia, Mesquite in California, Cerro San Pedro in Mexico, and the Peak mines in Australia.
Rainy River began processing ore as scheduled September 14 and had its first gold pour occurred October 6. In the mine's first 30 days it operation, it successfully processed 457,000 st of ore, the company said.
Once at nameplate capacity, Rainy River will be the company's largest operation. Its projected output of more than 300,000 mt/year will be about three times the amount of its next largest mines.
Taylor said Rainy River has an estimated mine life of 14 years. It will be an open-pit operation for the first nine years "and then we'll go underground" for the final five.
The mine has about 555 employees, "70% local and 30% are indigenous people which we're really proud of," she added.
Rainy River has estimated reserves of 3.8 million oz of gold and 9.4 million oz of silver.
The company also is developing the Blackwater gold project, southwest of Prince George, British Columbia, which has estimated reserves of 8.2 million oz of gold and 60.8 million oz of silver.
