Australian gold mining company Troy Resources on Monday reported positive results from an updated prefeasibility study that considered only an open-pit mining scenario at its Karouni project in Region Seven providing a faster route to production as opposed to including an underground mine. “We are very pleased with the results of the study which shows that Karouni is an economically robust project with a payback of just over a year,” CEO Paul Benson said. The company is fast tracking development of Karouni and expects first production before the end of fiscal year 2015. In April, the company had announced that in order to fast track development of the project and to enable production to be brought forward to the first half of 2015, the initial pre-feasibility study would consider only the open pits and a pre-feasibility study for the underground would be completed at a later date.
The Australian company’s subsidiary Troy Resources Guyana Limited had proposed a medium-scale gold mine designed to produce up to 110,000 ounces of gold per annum based on an average overall recovery of 92% at the Black Water Creek, Kaburi Area, in Region Seven. The mine will be focused on the recovery of ore for processing from Smarts and