The Python modular process plants can be used either underground or at the surface. Indeed, they were initially designed for use underground but so far, nobody has taken that step.

Being designed for underground they come with a couple of advantages – small footprint and “low height” development.

The project, within the Arctic Circle will be delivered in two stages over a two-year period.

Completion of the 1000 tonne per day Stage 1 plant is estimated by the end of 2016.

Major components of the plant design are: a three-stage crushing circuit and coarse grind to 212 micron using a vertical shaft impactor and ball mill; continuous gravity gold recovery in Gekko inline pressure jigs; rougher and cleaner flotation; concentrate regrind with free gold recovery and batch intensive leaching; leaching with continuous inline leach reactors; leach residue filtering to recover pregnant solution; cyanide destruction using the sulphur dioxide-air process; and 300,000 ounce per year gold recovery using AuRix resin and Gekko’s G-Rex columns.

The G-Rex columns are Gekko’s replacement for the carbon columns in gold processing plants.

The Aurix resin comes from a third party and is used to strip gold from the pregnant solution.

The processing using the Aurix resin is from a suite of technologies Gekko picked up when it bought Randy Agius’ business a few years back.

The modular plant has been designed to initially treat 1000t of mill feed per day and reach its maximum capacity of 2000tpd in early 2018.

Prior to landing in TMAC’s hands, Hope Bay was initially drilled out by BHP, which also completed the initial underground development of the Boston deposit.

Miramar Mining took over the property in 1999 and expanded the mineralised zones.

Newmont Mining bought the property in 2007 and upgraded the infrastructure including air strips, fuel storage, camps, ports, a nearly completed processing plant in South Africa and the underground Doris deposit.

The project was put on care and maintenance in 2011.

In 2013 TMAC signed a definitive sale agreement with Newmont over the project.

Gekko co-founder Elizabeth Lewis-Grey said this would be the first time the Ballarat-based company would work in the Arctic.

“We’re engaging with a number of consultants and with the client to give us advice on how to handle the conditions,” she said.

That said, the processing plant will be built in a shed so extreme temperatures should not be too much of an issue.

Lewis-Grey said the plant should be operating in an environment where the temperature was above 0C.

The fact the plant can go into a shed is a testament to its small footprint.

“It shows how relevant the small footprint and optimised throughput is,” Lewis-Gray said.

“It has a strong bearing on occupational health and safety.

“We call it a low height modular plant and in terms of maintenance and occupational safety and health it’s incredibly easier to manage.”

Not that Gekko is unused to cold climes. It has a fair bit of its equipment being used in Canada and Alaska. Indeed, it has had an office in Vancouver, Canada since 2002.

Lewis-Gray said the reason the Python had never made its way underground was due to the fact that it would change the mining practices quite a bit.