Manuka Resources Aiming to Restart Mount Boppy Gold Mine in Q4

Manuka Resources (ASX:MKR) shared an update on the restart of its Mount Boppy gold mine on Monday (August 12), saying it's targeting the fourth quarter of this year for first output from the site.

The company is in the midst of building a fit-for-purpose processing and gold production facility at the Mount Boppy site for a cost of AU$11.6 million, a strategy it disclosed to the public in April.

Previously, ore produced at Mount Boppy was taken 150 kilometres south to Manuka's carbon-in-leach plant at the Wonawinta silver mine. A 400 kilowatt ball mill is now being relocated from Wonawinta to Mount Boppy,

According to Manuka, Mount Boppy, which is located in New South Wales' Cobar Basin, will be a high-margin operation with an average EBITDA of AU$19 million per year over an initial period of five years.

The company has already saved AU$850,000 following its AU$266,000 purchase of a new InLine Pressure Jig and Intensive Leach Reactor from Gekko Systems via auction; its original budget was AU$1.1 million.

Manuka said both items are currently undergoing refurbishment at Gekko Systems.

Mount Boppy is a historic mining site, and was formerly one of the largest gold producers in Australia. The company states on its website that underground mining at the property started in 1901 and last until 1923, with 417,000 ounces of gold from ore produced at a notional grade of 15 grams per tonne (g/t) gold.

Up to 7,000 ounces of gold production were added until around 2002. Manuka acquired the project in 2019, and started processing ore from the site in April 2020. In April, it delivered an updated resource estimate for the site. Mount Boppy's resource now stands at 4.28 million tonnes at 1.19 g/t gold for 163,000 ounces of contained gold.

The company is currently looking at ways to the increase milling capacity at Mount Boppy and to accelerate the mine's gold production; it plans to keep investors updated in the coming months.

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Securities Disclosure: I, Gabrielle de la Cruz, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.

Editorial Disclosure: Manuka Resources is a client of the Investing News Network. This article is not paid-for content.