Underground mining is our future

You don't see much of an underground mine. When the operation is finished you see even less. We think underground mining is the way of the future.
Left: The portal of the operating Favona underground mine at Waihi.

Below: The portal of the now closed and rehabilitated Golden Cross mine in the Waitekauri Valley, Coromandel. This mine closed just over 10 years ago. The site is now a farm. There are walking tracks on the site which are open to the public.
Left: The portal and stockpile area at Newmont Waihi Gold's Favona mine on the outskirts of Waihi. You can see this mine by taking the Black Hill walking track to the south of Waihi.


Modern underground mines like Favona and Trio (far left) are 'tight filled' after the ore has been removed. For every truck load of ore we take out of the mine we put back a truck load or waste. If we don't have enough material we truck rock in from off site.

Waste rock is returned underground to prevent the type of subsidence events that can sometimes occur above historic underground workings. Everybody in Waihi knows about the 'house in the hole' from 2001. There were also subsidences in 1961 and 1999 from historic workings that had been mined and then left unfilled. Nobody wants this to ever happen again.

We have said from the start that any gold mining we undertake on the Coromandel will be by underground. We are targetting high grade deposits that are economic to mine by underground methods like those we currently use at Favona and Trio just outside Waihi. Haven't heard of either of these mines? That's probably because all the tourists go to see the Martha open pit gold mine, and at Favona there's not much to see.

An underground mine needs an area about the size of five football fields. In that area there would be a portal, a stockpile, and facilities for staff and machinery. There may need to be a water treatment facility too. And that's pretty much it. If we found an economic deposit within 100 kilometres of Waihi we would truck the ore back to process it, or perhaps pipe it back. We won't know until we find an economic deposit and assess its geology.