Underground production has officially kicked off at Vertex Minerals’ Reward gold mine in New South Wales, with the first blasting on the Lady Belmore Reef being undertaken over the weekend.
The milestone positions Vertex to start processing high-grade stope ore from Reward in the coming weeks. The material will accompany the low-grade gold stockpile feed to the gravity processing plant until all mining fronts at Reward are enabled.
“As previously announced, the start-up mine schedule includes mining 2075 tonnes at 17.8 (grams per tonne of gold) from a developed airleg stope block,” Vertex said.
“The planned stope width is the same as the interpretation of the mineralisation. Given the stope will take some time to extract, additionally, the Vertex geology and mining team have brought forward a very high-grade long hole stope to commence mining in August 2025.
“The high-grade long hole stope is to be mined with a long hole stope method, using the Epiroc production rig.”
Reward’s underground mining operation has a JORC resource of 225,000 ounces at 16.7 grams per tonne. Vertex aims to have at least four mining fronts at Reward while maintaining a continuous feed to the nearby processing plant, which will involve various mining methods.
Recent milestones at Reward include the underground 11-kilovolt-amperes to 1000-volt transformer substation being installed, access drives to Reward’s two starter stopes being cleaned for drilling to commence, and decline 3 on the mica vein being fully dewatered to provide further feed to the gravity plant.