The Bellevue gold project is an underground mine being developed in the Sir Samuel region of Western Australia.
Australian gold mining company Bellevue Gold owns the project through its subsidiary Golden Spur Resources.
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Stage one of the feasibility study for the project was completed in February 2021, followed by stage two in September the same year. The project is estimated to have a mine life of approximately eight years.
In September 2022, Bellevue signed a native title agreement with Tjiwarl RNTCB for developing the project.
Another Indigenous Australian-owned company, the Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety, approved the mining proposal for the project in January 2023. The final permit for the tailings facility and water storage was awarded in June 2023.
Underground stoping at the mine commenced in August 2023. First gold production is scheduled for the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2023.
Project location
The Bellevue gold project is situated in the Sir Samuel region, approximately 430km north of Kalgoorlie and 40km north of Leinster in Western Australia.
The project lies next to the sealed Goldfields Highway, which cuts through the tenements situated in the west of the site.
Geology and mineralisation
The Bellevue mine lies in the Agnew-Wiluna portion of the Norseman-Wiluna Greenstone belt within the partially tholeiitic meta-basalts of the Mount Goode Basalts. It contains a mix of felsic to intermediate volcanic sequences, meta-sediments, ultramafic komatiite flows, jones creek conglomerates, and tholeiitic meta basalts.
Prominent gold deposits in the region are situated near or alongside north-north-west trending fault zones. Gold mineralisation at the property is associated with remobilised pyrrhotite and chalcopyrite within shear structures and associated veins.
Reserves
The probable ore reserves at Bellevue are estimated at 6.8 tonnes (t) grading 6.1g/t gold (Au) and containing 1.34moz of gold, as of June 2022.
Mining at Bellevue gold project
The Bellevue gold mine will be developed through conventional mechanised underground longhole stoping mining methods to extract the majority of the ore reserves. The remaining reserves will be recovered through open-pit methods for the shallower parts of Tribune and Vanguard lodes.
Underground mining will be performed at five high-grade areas including Deacon/Deacon North, Tribune, Armand, Marceline, and Viago. Each of the areas includes independent internal accesses and ventilation circuits.
Underground mining commenced in May 2022 and will utilise a fleet of 60-tonne (t) trucks, 5m³ loaders, twin-boom jumbo drill rigs, a 7m³ development loader, a back-fill loader, a grader, and production drills. Ore will be transported directly to the processing plant’s run-of-mine pad by underground trucks.
The open-pit mining operation will use 120t excavators and 90t trucks. Mining commenced at the Vanguard open pit in April 2023.
Processing
The Bellevue gold project will use a conventional carbon-in-leach (CIL) and gravity plant with a nameplate capacity of one million tonnes per annum.
The processing facility will include a three-stage crushing circuit comprising a primary jaw crusher along with secondary and tertiary cone crushers. The crushed ore will then pass through a single ball mill circuit closed with hydro-cyclones to achieve a product size of 75μm.
The discharge slurry stream from the mill will undergo centrifugal gravity concentration, followed by batch-intensive leaching. The leach feed stream will be thickened to 50% solids prior to leaching in a hybrid CIL circuit comprising one leach tank and six CIL adsorption tanks.
The loaded carbon will undergo acid washing and elution following electrowinning to produce a pregnant solution. The cathode sludge from electrowinning will undergo smelting to produce a final product of gold ore.
Bellevue signed a refining agreement with ABC Refinery, which will enable gold produced from the mine to be refined separately and marketed as a green product.
Infrastructure
The project can be accessed through the gazetted and sealed Goldfields Highway.
Process and service water for the project will be sourced from existing pit storage and groundwater recovered from mining operations. Fresh water will be sourced from a borefield situated 8km north of the process plant.
Bellevue signed a power purchase agreement with a subsidiary of Zenith Energy Operations to build, own, operate, and maintain an 88MW hybrid power plant for an initial term of 15 years. The power plant will incorporate wind, solar, and thermal generation, in addition to battery energy storage.
A 300-person accommodation village, mining and administration buildings, and other ancillary facilities will also be developed.
Financing
Bellevue Gold executed a loan facility of A$200m with Macquarie Bank for the project in December 2021.
Contractors involved
Develop Global, a resource exploration company, was awarded the underground mining contract in April 2022.
NRW, a construction and mining contractor, was awarded the open-pit mining and tailings facility construction contract for the Bellevue gold project.
RUC Cementation Mining Contractors, an underground mining contractor, was awarded the raiseboring contract in September 2022.
The feasibility study was conducted by mining consultancy Entech in collaboration with external consultants.
Project manager INCREVA provided the project implementation plan.
GR Engineering Services devised the design of the process plant and related infrastructure and estimated the processing capital and operating costs.
MINEGEOTECH, a geotechnical engineering company, conducted geotechnical analyses for the development.
Metallurgy and mineral processing company ALS Metallurgy conducted metallurgical tests along with Extreme Metallurgy and Fremantle Metallurgy.
Resource Engineering Consultants, GEKKO, WAPGC, KPMG, DynamicIT, MBS Environmental, International Resource Solutions, Blueprint, Project Consultancy Services, and RPS are some of the other consultants involved in the feasibility study.
