Tanami

Overview

Newmont's Tanami Operations is located on Aboriginal freehold land in the remote Tanami Desert of the Northern Territory. Mining for gold began in the early 1900s and, most recently, from the late-1980s to present day.

Production comes from the Callie underground operation, at Dead Bullock Soak, with ore processed at the Granites Mill, more than 40km to the east.

At the end of 2011, Callie had 2.52 million ounces of gold reserves. Production for the year was 221,000 ounces gold.

In July 2011, a decision was announced to invest $450 million on a deep shaft project that has the potential to extend the mine life. Mining of the deep areas would provide an aditional 60,000 oz to 90,000 oz of gold per year while also reducing the costs by about $100 per ounce.The new mine extension would commence production in 2015.

Location

Tanami gold mine is located in the south of the Northern Territory, Australia.

The Northern Territory is a federal territory of Australia, occupying much of the centre of the mainland continent, as well as the central northern regions.  It is the least populous of Australia's eight major states and territories. Its economy is based on tourism and mining.

Alice Springs is situated in the geographic centre of Australia near the southern border of the Northern Territory. It is an arid environment consisting of several different deserts. Tanami is 550 km northwest of Alice Springs.

Geology & Mineralization

The Tanami region is one of the major Proterozoic gold provinces of the world. It is situated along the border between the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

Tanami mineral deposit consist of a steeply dipping anastamosing shear zone that is 50 to 70 m wide contains gold mineralization over a 1.1 km strike length. Additional gold in soil geochemical anomalies are on the property. The deposit contains zones of high-grade mineralization. Some of the better mineralized intercepts include 14 m grading 38 g/t Au and 17 m grading 36.3 g/t Au uncut.

In the Tanami goldfields mineralizing fluids have a strong meteoric water signature. Gold was most likely scavenged from country rocks by high-presure fluids circulating on fault systems.

At depth underground extensions of the Callie deposit have been successfully tested by drilling.

Mining & Operation

Operations include The Granites treatment plant (located approximately 550 km NW of Alice Springs) and Dead Bullock Soak (located 40 km west of The Granites) in the Tanami Desert region of the Northern Territory. The Tanami operations also include the Groundrush deposit. The operations are predominantly focused on the Callie underground mine at Dead Bullock Soak, with mill feed supplemented by production from the Dead Bullock Soak open pit and the Bunkers and Quorn pits at The Granites.

Mining method of choice is sublevel open stoping with cemented backfill which can improve extraction selectivity.

Mining equipment include: Underground trucks: Caterpillar AD55B (10) & AD55 (7); LHDs: Caterpillar R2900G (5); Drill jumbos/production rigs: Sandvik (Tamrock) Solo 7 (3), Sandvik (Tamrock) Avera D07 (3), Sandvik Minimatic H205 (1); Graders: Caterpillar 12H (2) & 16H (1); Robbins raise drills (41R & 73R) (2); Getman 2-500C and Charmec 1610B charging rigs; Boart Longyear diamond drills - LM75 (2) & LM90 (2); Wheel loaders: Volvo L120 (5), Caterpillar 980G (1), Caterpillar 972G (1); Caterpillar 690 truck (1)

 In July 2011, a decision was announced to invest $450 million on a deep shaft project that has the potential to extend the mine life. The shaft would help transport ore to the surface and make it more economic to continue mining beyond the 1.4 km depth. Mining of these at depth areas would provide an aditional 60,000 oz to 90,000 oz of gold per year while also reducing the costs by about $100 per ounce.

Processing

 Ore from all of these operations is processed through The Granites plant. Ore from Groundrush is processed through the Tanami plant rather than The Granites plant. The Tanami mill is located 27 miles (43 kilometers) southwest of Groundrush.

An all weather road connects Dead Bullock Soak with The Granites treatment plant, which comprises crushing, grinding and conventional carbon-in-pulp circuits. The plant was commissioned in 1986 and has been progressively upgraded to a current design capacity of approximately 2.5 million tonnes per annum.

Environment & Community

Newmont operates in compliance with applicable laws, regulations and other legal requirements. In addition to this mandate, its internal management system includes a global set of performance standards. Its goal is continuous improvement, and it regularly measure itself against these performance criteria to track its progress.

Tanami manages one of the largest mine closure programs in Australia, in  one of the country's most remote and harsh environments. The site has 45 open pits, eight backfilled pits, 11 in-pit tailing storage facilities, 24 waste rock landforms, two tailing storage facilities, a processing plant and on-site village accommodation. The objective is to rehabilitate land to the point it can support sustainable ecosystems. After restoration, the land will be returned to Traditional Owners.

Tanami is a fly-in fly-out mining operation.