Kirkland Lake has revealed its intentions to temporarily suspend operations at its Cosmo gold mine in Australia.
Kirkland Lake president and CEO Tony Makuch said that the suspension would enable the mining company to hold an operational review and get a better understanding of adjacent exploration targets to support profitable organic growth in the future.
The recently discovered Lantern Deposit will be among the company’s mine exploration targets.
Production at the Cosmo mine located in the Northern Territory will be ceased from 30 June.
Kirkland Lake released a statement in this regard which read: “This will allow the Company to focus its activities on an aggressive resource definition and exploration program at the mine, including the newly discovered Lantern deposit, and resume active exploration on advanced regional targets.”
The gold producer said that the Cosmo Mine will be maintained to be ready to restart operations as and when the company is done with the exploration, resource definition and the development planning phase.
Kirkland Lake has reduced the production guidance of the Cosmo mine to 20,000 ounces from the original range of 60,000-65,000 ounces.
On the other hand, operating cash cost per ounce sold at the mine will be increase to a range of $1,500/oz to $1,600/oz from $941/oz to $1,020/oz.
It also added that the discovery of the Lantern resource has the potential to explore mining of higher tonnages at an increased grade. For this, it said a complete appreciation of its development stage opportunity is needed.
Kirkland Lake, which operates in both Canada and Australia, had acquired Vancouver-based Newmarket Gold in November last year for a sum of $740m.