Recovery of high-grade pillars during the process of mining a stoping panel was seen to be a step towards a solution for the planning of additional reserves. Minjar Gold identified the use of WebGen™, Orica’s wireless initiation system, could be deployed to recover these island pillars, making them a Temporary Island Pillar (TIP).
All blasts were carried out without incident and achieving recoveries far and above design. The recovery of 400% from the 6-hole TIP firing was well above the customer’s expectation and the expected “measure for success” of 50%. The increase of recovered tonnes can be somewhat, but not solely, be attributed to the broken ore sitting on top of the island pillar unrecovered from previous firings.
This material would not have been recovered conventionally if the TIP had not been successfully blasted. Minjar Gold were very happy with the outstanding success. A new pillar recovery technique had been proven that improves their flexibility in mine design and provides the potential to increase attainable mining reserves. The cost of achieving the extra ounces is low, due to no ore access costs, and so profitability is improved.
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Case Study_WebGen _Pajingo_Temporary Island Pillar_2019_Final
