Local mining company GBM Gold has sold its processing plant at the Kangaroo Flat mine but is still 12-18 months away from resuming prospecting.
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The Australian Securities Exchange-listed company on Thursday announced the $6.2 million sale – $2.07 million of which will go to previous owner of the mining site, Unity Mining.
No gold mining has occurred locally since 2011, when Unity Mining, who sold the Bendigo Goldfield to GBM Gold in 2016, declared reserves were drying up.
GBM Gold plans to enter into an agreement with other Victorian ore-processing facilities – three of which are located in Inglewood, Maldon and Ballarat – to process material.
Related: Mining set to resume in Bendigo
The processing plant, which was purchased by Australian Mining Equipment Exporters Pty Ltd, will be dismantled and its parts exported to Guinea, West Africa.
The plant will be exported in the second or third quarters of 2018.
GBM Gold has been looking to sell the processing equipment for the past 12 months.
Seven per cent of gold recovery was not captured in the five years the processing plant operated between 2006-2011, according to GBM Gold.
The company believes a significant portion of the gold not captured is in approximately 430,000 tonnes of material stored in the coarse sand dam at the Kangaroo Flat site, which will be mined and processed over a period of two to three years.
GBM Gold’s mining licence is up for renewal in August, and the company’s chief executive John Harrison said it intends to renew all of its mining licences.
