Aurelia Metals recently announced that the Hera underground mine at Nymagee is expected to cease commercial production at the end of March 2023.
In their ASX Announcement, Aurelia’s Interim Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Graham, said the decision was made following a re-optimization of the life of mine plan.
Upon the cessation of production, Hera’s surface facilities will transition to Care and Maintenance before being utilized by their nearby Federation Project.
The revised mine plan will sequence the highest value ore within the remaining available ore sources to maximise cash generation from the remaining mineral inventory at Hera.
Mr Graham said the cessation of mining comes earlier than previously planned, but was necessary following two quarters of negative cash flow.
“I am confident our revised mine plan will return Hera to positively contributing to the cashflow of the Company over its remaining operating life,” Mr Graham said.
“We don’t make this change lightly.
“We understand this is challenging news for our employees, contractors and the local community, but a decision that has to be made in the interests of Aurelia’s shareholders.”
He said they were consulting with the Hera workforce to explore options to redeploy as many workers as possible to their Peak operations, where vacancies exist, and also further afield to their Dargues Mine (near Canberra).
“Despite these redeployment activities, there will be some redundancies at the cessation of Hera’s operations,” Mr Graham said
