Dolinnoye is a recently started operating open pit gold mine situated several kilometres from the Pustynnoye Mine operated by JSC Altynalmas in south east Kazakhstan. Pustynnoye is the location of the processing facility for the Dolinnoye ore where there is mostly shared operating infrastructure. Ore from Dolinnoye is currently transferred by diesel trucks to the processing plant at Pustynnoye for gold recovery.
The initial technical work carried out by SRK at the Dolinnoye mine was commissioned in 2018 when SRK produced the first Mineral Resource Estimate of the Dolinnoye deposit that was prepared in accordance with the JORC Code (2012).
Since then, SRK has provided technical support at Dolinnoye over a wide range of disciplines which culminated in a Feasibility Study in 2019. The SRK feasibility study presented the case to develop Dolinnoye as a mine that would in many respects operate as a satellite operation to Pustynnoye but would require a stand alone plant to cope with the Dolinnoye ore processing requirements.
The Dolinnoye deposit has been explored extensively in the past and there were a small amount of underground workings present in and around the orebody. These were developed during Soviet times to inform the initial resource estimates. SRK digitised the old maps into Leapfrog software and considered their impact on both the resource estimate and future mining operations.
A key part of the SRK mineral resource update was to inform the geological and resource models with the results of structural studies and measurements taken from the trial open pit mine at Dolinnoye. This allowed SRK to produce a revised, more accurate interpretation of the geology which has assisted with resource modelling and grade estimation . The enhanced block model produced by SRK has facilitated short term mine planning and also allowed the Client to improve their grade control practices. The accurate orebody block models from SRK can now be compared with surveys and the recovered metals to provide a high quality reconciliation between actual and forecast production.
