1 PIT-TO-PLANT OPTIMISATION AT MORILA GOLD MINE

AngloGold, the operating partner in a joint venture with Randgold Resources and the Government of Mali, own and operate the Morila Gold Mine. The open pit gold mining operation is located in Southern Mali, approximately 280 kilometres by road south-east of Bamako, the capital of Mali, West Africa. The mined ore is processed through a conventional semi-autogenous grinding and ball milling, including a recycle crusher, (SABC) comminution and carbon-in-leach (CIL) circuit together with a gravity gold recovery step with final residue reporting to a tailings storage facility by way of cyclone deposition. Pit-to-Plant (p2p) is a concept incorporating the various disciplines of geology, mining, metallurgy and engineering, to optimise the entire comminution circuit. At Morila, comminution commences in the pit with the fragmentation of ore through blasting and continues at the metallurgical facility with primary crushing, SAG and ball milling including a recycle pebble crusher. The primary objective of the p2p programme is to increase mill throughput, but it must be stressed that this must not be at the expense of grade control, thus it is imperative that ore body dilution be minimised. This paper takes the reader through the various project phases, including the cost of the p2p project at Morila where the mill throughput was substantially increased from 365 tph to approximately 400 tp