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Gekko Systems Company Profile
As maiden gold pours go the one by TMAC Resources at its C$325 million Hope Bay project in Canada’s north was a momentous one. It not only marked the production start at a new generation mine in a standout emerging goldfield, but also realisation of a remarkable vision for the future of the industry conceived and developed by Australia’s Gekko Systems over the past 20 years.
“This is a project that fits with our reason for being, really,” says Gekko technical director and co-founder, Sandy Gray.
“We are focussed on step-change in the industry, through low-energy process flowsheet designs, low capital costs and small footprint and modular designs that are positive for the environment, deliver lower operating costs, and allow fast, low-risk, predictable project delivery and execution.
“We’ve worked for a very long time on this project and we are confident this is just the start for us and for many companies developing similar sorts of projects.”
The Doris mine and its state-of-the-art gold treatment plant at Hope Bay are still in the all-important ramp-up phase to commercial production. That will occur in two stages, with a second Gekko Python pre-concentration unit arriving later this year to increase overall plant throughput. TMAC expects Hope Bay will produce an average of 160,000oz a year at all-in-sustaining costs of US$785/oz over a current projected mine life of 20 years.
The company, which controls an 80km-long, 20km-wide prospective belt on which the Doris and other deposits have already been identified, has described the area as, potentially, Canada’s “next great gold mining camp”.
A spokesperson for TMAC said after the inaugural gold pour the Hope Bay district might one day be compared with Red Lake in Ontario, or Abitibi in Quebec, both prolific greenstone belts with tens of millions of ounces of gold resources identified. There’s a “better than an even chance that there’s more gold there than we’ve identified in the current 20-year mine plan” TMAC’s spokesperson said.
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