Eldorado Gold, last week, announced an encouraging update on its high-quality growth projects in Greece, in the process highlighting its maturing automation efforts at the Skouries underground gold project.
Greece remains key to Eldorado’s strategy, with three projects, Skouries, Olympias Expansion and Perama Hill, advancing as planned, it said in the update, positioning the gold miner for significant production growth, improved margins and enhanced cash flow.
Homing in on Skouries, a copper-gold porphyry deposit set to mined using a combination of conventional open-pit and underground mining techniques, the company said overall project progress had reached 90% as of December 31 when including the first phase of construction, and 78% when considering “phase 2”.
Based on the 2022 feasibility study, Skouries’ initial life of mine is 20 years, and it is expected to produce on average 140,000 oz of gold and 67 MIb (30,391 t) of copper per year, or approximately 240,000 oz/y of gold equivalent.
First concentrate production is expected towards the end of March, with commercial production expected in mid-year, the company said last week. Open-pit mining was progressing ahead of schedule, with significant ore stockpiles being established for plant start-up, while, underground, the company had successfully completed the first of two test stopes, with ore stockpiled on surface.
It is in the more detailed report on underground development at Skouries where automation was mentioned.
A total of 1,155 m of underground development was completed in the most recent quarter at Skouries. At the same time, the company carried out a test stope program that, it says, delivered high-quality results during the quarter. The first of two test stopes was completely mined out and mining of the second test stope will be completed in February.
“Each test stope mined to date is expected to provide approximately 72,000 t of ore, with dimensions of 60 m in height and an area of 30 x 15 m,” the company said. “Ore fragmentation has exceeded expectations, and stope cavity monitoring and extraction has met our expectations. This success has increased our confidence in the planned trial of four larger test stopes in 2026, each designed at approximately 97,000 t per stope with dimensions of 60 m in height and an area of 30 x 20 m per stope.”
“Semi-autonomous ore loading and open stope drilling”, with operators on surface, was successfully used during the mining of these two test stopes, according to the company. “This technology enables a single operator to control several pieces of equipment simultaneously, increasing safety, drill accuracy and productivity, reducing idle time between shifts and during blast clearance, and decreasing associated costs,” it noted.
At Skouries, stope drilling, mucking and haulage is carried out by Finland-based underground contractor Tapojärvi, in coordination with local Eldorado teams. Slot raises are developed by raiseboring and conducted by a sub-contractor, according to Niklas Frank, Senior Vice President Operations.
When it comes to the “Semi-autonomous ore loading and open stope drilling”, Frank said the operation was employing equipment and infrastructure from two different OEMs to achieve the outcomes cited in the latest report.
“For longhole drilling, an Epiroc Simba E60S tophammer unit is used for both upholes and downholes,” he told IM. “Longhole drilling is mostly operated in teleremote mode from a control room on surface, but there is also some manual drilling that takes place.”
The Simba E60 S (see below; photo: Epiroc) is, Epiroc says, a long-hole production drill rig for medium-to-large drift mining that is designed for teleremote operation.
Frank said: “For stope mucking, Sandvik LH517i diesel loaders are used with Sandvik’s AutoMine® Lite system, which supports automated cycles.”
AutoMine Lite is an automation system meant for a single Sandvik loader (such as the automation-ready Toro® LH517i) or truck and a more advanced alternative to AutoMine Tele-Remote, Sandvik says. The solution (pictured below; photo: Sandvik Mining) maximises machine performance through automation, resulting in increased productivity, safety and cost efficiency in mining operations.
Frank added on the potential for further load and haul automation at Skouries: “This can feasibly be upgraded to Multi-Lite functionality in the future for one operator to control multiple units from surface.”
Sandvik states that AutoMine Multi-Lite is an automation system that enables each system operator to remotely and simultaneously supervise multiple automated Sandvik loaders and trucks, while performing automated missions in dedicated production areas.
It’s good to point out that this is not Eldorado’s first load and haul automation rodeo.
Lamaque was the first of its mines to implement teleremote equipment with the introduction of AutoMine for Sandvik equipment and Cat Command for underground for Caterpillar equipment. The company has since gone on to conduct remote mucking via AutoMine Multi-Lite at the Olympias gold-silver-lead-zinc mine, also in Greece, with the implementation beginning in 2023.
In a blog post on the Olympias deployment from 2024, Eldorado said: “The greatest benefit of remote mucking is that it takes people out of harm’s way. Our team on the ground takes every precaution; however, there is always an element of risk when mobile equipment is involved. We know from our recent health and safety perceptions survey that our frontline workers in Greece have a strong favourable sentiment about having the tools and equipment needed to complete their work safely. It’s continuous improvement ideas like remote mucking that will help this sentiment continue trending in a favourable direction on future surveys.”
The post Automation already in the mix at Eldorado’s Skouries gold project appeared first on International Mining.