Beacon Minerals anticipates first bullion within weeks to take advantage of prevailing gold price

Beacon Minerals (ASX: BCN) is on track to becoming Australia’s next gold producer with commissioning underway at the Jaurdi processing facility and first gold bullion imminent.

In Beacon’s latest commissioning update, it revealed mill throughputs were running 20% above the pre-feasibility study prediction.

Additionally, recoveries have been exceeding 90% and are 5% higher than the PFS estimate.

“The mill commissioning team have done an excellent job in getting the plant to its current status in such a short time,” Beacon managing director Graham McGarry said.

“It is an exciting time for the company with the mill performing at better than design throughput, increased mill recovery, a record Australian gold price and the first gold in bullion production expected in early September.”

Jaurdi gold project

Beacon entered an agreement to acquire Jaurdi in January 2017 from Fenton and Martin Mining Developments Pty Ltd.

After bedding down its ownership of the project, which is 35km from Coolgardie in Western Australia, Beacon focused on advancing the asset – publishing a PFS in August last year.

The study revealed capital expenditure of $21.4 million would be required to develop an initial five-year 500,000t per annum carbon-in leach operation.

Underpinning the operation is resource of 2.88Mt at 1.8 grams per tonne gold for 163,100oz.

Over the first five years, the mine is anticipated to generate $208.5 million in revenue based on an assumed base case gold price of A$1,650/oz.

The study assumes all in sustaining costs of A$830/oz.

Gold price at all-time highs

In Australian dollar terms, the gold price is at all-time highs, with the precious metal trading at A$2,267/oz this morning – substantially higher than the PFS base case price of A$1,650/oz.

Economist Jim Rickards and Martin Place Securities executive chairman Barry Dawes have both publicly touted they expect gold to hit at least A$10,000/oz in the current bull run.

The market reacted positively to Beacon’s news this morning pushing its shares up more than 4% to trade at $0.046 mid-morning.