Laneway Resources (formerly Rension Consolidated Mines) owns the high-grade Agate Creek gold project located in North Queensland, Australia.
Mining lease application of the gold project was submitted to the Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy in February 2015, while the mining lease was granted in February 2019.
Laneway Resources began mining activities and produced first gold at the Agate Creek gold project in April 2019.
Agate Creek gold project location, geology, and mineralization
The Agate Creek gold project is located approximately 40km south of Forsayth and 60km west of Kidston, North Queensland.
Project Gallery
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The Agate Creek project is a high-grade gold mine located in North Queensland, Australia. Image courtesy of Laneway Resources.
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Mining activities at Agate Creek gold project began in April 2019. Image courtesy of Laneway Resources.
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Laneway Resources is the project owner and developer. Image courtesy of Laneway Resources.
The project is located within the Etheridge goldfield, which produced more than 3.7 million ounces (Moz) of gold in addition to silver, copper, lead, and other minerals.
Extending in 689.3ha, the project is made up of Sherwood and Sherwood West prospects.
The project hosts rocks of Proterozoic Robertson River subgroup, which include those belonging to the Silurian Robinhood Granodiorite and the Permian Agate Creek volcanic group.
The gold mineralization of the project is made up of epithermal and meso thermal systems hosted within the quartz veining, stockworks, and breccias.
Low-sulphidation gold mineralization is predominant at the Sherwood prospect, which hosts adularia-sericite type epithermal system.
Agate Creek gold project reserves
The Agate Creek gold project holds JORC-compliant resources of 8.2 million tonnes (Mt) containing 381,000oz of gold grading 1.4g/t.
Mining and processing of ore at Agate
The Agate Creek gold project is an open-cut operation, which stockpiles the ore before conveying it to the processing plant. The ore will be processed at the Black Jack processing plant, owned and operated by Maroon Gold.
The existing carbon-in-leach (CIL) processing plant is located outside the Charters Towers, in proximity to the gold project.
The Black Gold plant has an installed capacity of 340,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) and is expected to be equipped with improvised facilities such as a Falcon concentrator and Gekko intensive leach reactor.
The plant design includes crushing and grinding circuits, small gravity circuit for coarse gold, gold absorption and desorption leach circuits, and electro-winning and gold pouring systems.
Based on the agreement with Maroon Gold, Laneway will receive 60% of the more than 3.5g/t grade gold produced at the Black Jack processing facility. Maroon Gold will retain the remaining 40% in addition to retaining the 3.5g/t grade gold produced towards processing costs.
Off-take agreement
Laneway Resources entered a gold and silver refining and sales agreement with Focus Metals, in February 2016, for purchasing up to 100,000oz of the gold produced at Agate Creek project.
Infrastructure facilities
Laneway will make use of the existing infrastructure facilities at the Black Jack gold processing plant to process the gold-containing ore from Agate Creek gold project.
Power supply for the processing plant’s operations is facilitated by the 66,000V Queensland State electricity grid.
Contractors involved
Australian Mine Design and Development was responsible for the preparatory works pertaining to the gold mining project.
Golder Associates prepared the 2011 mineral resource estimate for the Agate Creek gold project, while ResEval provided consultancy services as part of the 2012 mineral resource estimation and evaluation.