Peak Gold Mines held the first of their quarterly community update meetings at the Cobar Bowling & Golf Club last Wednesday night.
Peak’s acting general manager Michael Zannes welcomed the group of 20 interested members of the public along with a number of staff and their partners to last week’s information session.
Mr Zannes outlined some recent organisational changes that have occurred at Peak including the transfer of a number of the mine’s key staff to their parent company New Gold’s Rainy River project.
Mr Zannes said Rainy River was “the next big thing for New Gold” with the mine expected to produce in the vicinity of 320,000-350,000 ounces of gold per year.
He said when you compare that to Peak’s best year of 107,000oz (recorded last year) you can see why the company was making Rainy River its priority.
Mr Zannes said business-wise Peak had a good year in 2016 and was the second highest producer in the New Gold family.
Peak also recorded the second lowest total for production costs in the New Gold group.
He said the mine’s safety record had also been good and it was pleasing to see it was below the metalliferous mines NSW average.
Exploration staff outlined their plans for the first quarter which includes near mine drilling including exploration around the Peak headframe, and their drilling programs at Dapville and Princepessa which exploration supervisor Lize Stander said were “encouraging”.
Staff spoke about the plans for gaining access to Great Cobar and the options open to them to dewater the mine.
Residents also heard about the changes to mine’s community donations program.
