News

Millennium Minerals’ Nullagine Gold Operation, located in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, sources gold from seven mining centres established over a +40km strike length. Despite following a common structural trend, a large variance occurs between deposits, which requires a different approach to blasting for each pit—so blast movement is highly variable.

Previously, NGO had used BVIs (blast vector indicators or polypipe) to measure blast movement. The downfalls were a 40% BVI recovery rate on the top flitch and even less on the bottom flitch.

NGO transitioned to BMT’s blast movement monitors, which gave a 94% recovery rate of BMM data, and they are now able to confidently target narrow lodes that would have been lost due to movement.

NGO’s data indicates reduced ore loss and dilution and increased head grade since using the BMMs. Their ore tape set up is more accurate, which means allocation of material while ore spotting is a lot easier, and the mining process in general is more efficient. The system generates 100s of thousands of dollars in additional revenue for Nullagine, helps achieve the true life of the pit and recover all of the planned resource.

Hear Suzie Talikowski, Mine Geologist at Nullagine Gold Operation, describe how they have reduced dilution and ore loss in narrow vein ore bodies.