The shareholders of Western Australian gold explorer Catalpa Resources last week approved the proposed merger with the gold assets of its Lion Selection.
The merger will amalgamate Lion Selection's 30% holding in Newcrest's Cracow gold project with Catalpa's 100,000 ounce per annum Edna May operation. Catalpa now gains access to 30,000 ounces per annum from the Cracow joint venture to immediately become a gold producer.
Once Edna May is commissioned in 2010, the company will be able to produce a total of around 130,000 tonnes per annum.
Construction on site for the Edna May project commenced in late August. In early October, five 90 tonne trucks, one 120 tonne excavator and associated ancillary mining equipment were mobilised to site in preparation of pre-stripping.
The fleet commenced earthworks on 15 October preparing areas for the mining equipment maintenance facility, construction of roads, stockpiles and dumps in preparation for 24 hour mining operations in early November 2009.
Regular readers will already know that GR Engineering Services (GRES), the major contractor appointed to construct and refurbish the Edna May Gold Project process plant, has been on site overseeing construction for some months. The majority of the plant site earthworks including crusher dump pocket, crushed ore stockpile, grinding, leach and absorption, gold recovery area, raw and process water dams are now complete.
The process plant concrete civil works are also well advanced with the completion of the leach/absorption tank ring beams, workshop pad, MCC footings and pipe rack footings. The concrete rafts for both the SAG and ball mills are both complete as is the ball mill and SAG mill plinths.
The company has now finalised the recruitment of the mine’s management and technical teams, with their full complement of mining engineers, geologists, surveyors, supervisory staff, mining equipment operators and other mining support staff starting in early October also.
A reminder that their recruitment process will happen in two phases, with the first now completed. The second wave will support process activities on site and recruitment for these roles will occur in early January 2010.
On completion of recruitment phase one and two Catalpa will have over 100 full time employees. You can lodge an expression of interest here:
http://www.catalparesources.com.au/recruitment.asp [3]