Apollo Restarts Montana Tunnels
Apollo Gold restarted milling operations
at its Montana Tunnels open-pit gold
mine near Helena, Montana, in early
March 2007. The company stopped mining
at Montana Tunnels in October 2005,
following movement in a pit wall. The
plant continued to process stockpiled ore
until May 2006, when it was placed on
care and maintenance. Montana Tunnels
is now a 50:50 joint venture between
Apollo and Elkhorn Tunnels, with Apollo
acting as the manager.
The Montana Tunnels mill includes
crushing, grinding, gravity gold, flotation,
and filtration circuits. The mill is expected
to process an average of 15,000 st/d
for the balance of 2007. Products produced
will be gold and silver doré, a leadsilver-
gold concentrate, and a zinc-silvergold
concentrate. Both concentrates will
be transported via rail to the Teck-
Cominco smelter at Trail, British
Columbia. The doré will be refined in Salt
Lake City by Johnson Matthey.
Pit wall stabilization work and construction
of a new haulage ramp began at
Montana Tunnels in August 2006 and were
completed in January 2007. During this
process, Apollo moved waste rock from the
pit bottom to expose the orebody and
stockpiled some lower grade ore alongside
the mill. As of Feb. 28, 2007, 333,000 st
of lower-grade material and 45,000 st of
reserve-grade ores were stockpiled for
future processing. During 2007, ore delivery
from the mine to the mill is expected to
exceed mill capacity, which will result in an
increase in the stockpiles.
As of Dec. 31, 2006, ore reserves at
Montana Tunnels totaled 35.7 million st,
containing 551,700 oz of gold and 414
million lb of zinc.