Overview of Focus Minerals Ltd. Projects
Focus Minerals is in production from four mines spread across two major regional centres. These are The Laverton Region and the Coolgardie Region:
COOLGARDIE
- Three Mile Hill Processing Plant – Focus owns and operates the 1.2Mtpa Three Mile Hill Processing plant in Coolgardie, less than 5km trucking distance from the Tindals Mining Centre. The mill was commissioned by Focus in December 2009, after completing a $22m refit. It has a replacement value of >$100 million and can be expanded in line with business needs.
- Tindals Mining Centre: Underground – The Tindals Mining Centre underground operation has historically been the engine room of the Focus business. It features 5 main ore bodies and a gold endowment of 2,500 ounces per vertical metre with significant potential at depth. Current production is sustained at around 45,000tpm and Focus achieved reserve growth of 24% in CY 2011.
- Tindals Mining Centre: Open Pits – Focus commenced mining at the Tindals Open pits late in the June Quarter 2011. The Tindals Open Pits comprise multiple surface deposits within a 10 sq km area on which Focus has already defined a 4 year mine life with over 100,000oz in reserve and 1.4Moz in resource. Focus is currently producing at a rate of circa 30,000tpm at the open pits.
- The Mount Underground Mine – The Mount is a high-grade, narrow-vein underground mine that Focus took into production late in the March Quarter 2011, after trial mining 30,000t at 8.0g/t.
LAVERTON
The Laverton Greenstone Belt is one of the best gold endowed Achaean greenstone belts within the Yilgarn Craton of Western Australia. Over 28 million ounces of gold have been produced from the Laverton Region with major gold mines including Granny Smith, Sunrise Dam and Wallaby – all discovered in the last twenty years.
The Laverton Gold Project is a large scale open pit operation currently producing at a rate of approximately 100,000 ounces of gold per annum, with revenue derived through an Ore Purchase Agreement (OPA) with Barrick Gold for processing at the nearby 3.5Mtpa Granny Smith mill.
EXPLORATION
Across Coolgardie and Laverton, Focus has over 1,600 sq km of highly prospective tenements. These include:
- Treasure Island Gold Project – Treasure Island is a world class gold project that is situated on the southern end of the Boulder-Lefroy fault which has delivered over 100 million ounces of gold over the years. This grassroots project has yielded surface samples of over 50g/t and on which Focus commenced exploration in 2011, with the first ever diamond and aircore drill programs in the area. This exciting project is already displaying strong similarities to the 15Moz St Ives region, 35km to the north on Lake Lefroy.
- Greater Coolgardie – Focus has over 200 sq km of tenements surrounding the Tindals Mining Centre where the bulk of its Coolgardie production has been focused. This includes multiple brown fields exploration targets as well as the Nepean Nickel Project which has a current resource of 591,300t @ 2.2 per cent Ni, for 13,250t contained Ni.
- Laverton – Focus controls over 1,200 sq km of tenements throughout the Laverton region. Strong potential exists for extending existing mines, development of known deposits into mines and exploration for new discoveries. Much of the exploration success to date has been achieved through relatively shallow drilling to develop open pit ore reserves. Future exploration will target mineralisation at depth and along the well-established structural corridors which host the known deposits such as the Chatterbox Shear, where the Apollo deposit is being developed into a 1.5km long open pit.
