The refit at the treatment plant included repairs to all concrete and steel structures and an upgrade to the feed bin; plus the overhaul of all conveyors, which resulted in new belts, guards, motors, gearboxes and rollers.

Installation works included two cone crushers; a triple deck screen for the three stage crushing circuit; gravity circuit – with two Nelson concentrators and an Acacia reactor; and a control room with new control systems and data fibre throughout the circuit.

Other refurbishment work completed included overhauling the preleach; carbon-in-pulp adsorption and elution circuits and the gold room; and the installation of a tailings thickener, cyclone cluster and liquid cyanide and oxygen tank facilities.

A new Outotec thickener, associated pumps and floc system have also been installed on the circuit.

Additionally, a raw water dam with capacity to store seven days’ worth of water has been built; and the tailings storage facility was given an upstream tailings lift to boost its capacity to 12-18 months.

Work is continuing on installation and commissioning of a 5.5 megawatt containerised diesel power station and associated 550,000 litre fuel storage facility to supplement the existing 1.5MW grid based power supply provided by the 17MW capacity power line linking Davyhurst to the Goldfields power grid.

Eastern Goldfields chairman Michael Fotios said the company had a very high quality and modernised plant that would serve it well into the future as it built on the already pleasing exploration results unearthed on the surrounding tenure.

In mining and haulage news, low grade ore from the Siberia deposit is being stockpiled, with 20,000 tonnes sitting on Davyhurst’s run-of-mine pad.

Site establishment works kicked off at Siberia in May and construction of the bypass haul road is close to winding up, while civil works are continuing.