Golden Grove Mine


The Golden Grove Mine is a copper, lead, silver, zinc and gold mine located 52 km south-south-east of Yalgoo, Western Australia.
It is operated by EMR Capital, a specialist resources private equity manager, who purchased the mine from MMG in February 2017. Minerals and Metals Group was formed after its parent company China Minmetals bought the mine from OZ Minerals in June 2009. Golden Grove was part of a deal in which the Sepon, Century, Rosebery and Avebury Mines, the Dugald River, High Lake and Izok Lake Projects, as well as some exploration assets were sold for US$1.354 billion by OZ Minerals to China Minmetals.
The deal, initially including the Prominent Hill Mine, was blocked by the Australian Government, citing national security concerns. Wayne Swan, Treasurer of Australia, stated that Prominent Hill could not be included in the sale as it was within sensitive military area and the sale went only ahead after Prominent Hill was excluded.

History

The mine was originally owned by Australian Consolidated Minerals Pty Ltd before passing into the ownership of Normandy Poseidon Ltd in November 1991. Normandy, now renamed Normandy Mining Ltd, was acquired by Newmont Australia Ltd in February 2002.
Newmont passed on the mine to Oxiana Limited in June 2005 for A$265 million and Oxiana merged with Zinifex to form OZ Minerals in mid-2008. OZ Minerals had to sell Golden Grove in June 2009 to China Minmetals, like almost all its other mines, when the company was hit by severe financial difficulties.
The Golden Grove mine currently consists of two operations that are 3 km apart, the Gossan Hill underground mine and the Scuddles underground mine, which both produce zinc, copper, lead, silver and gold. The Gossan Hill deposit was first discovered in 1971 and the Scuddles deposit was first discovered in 1979.
In 2008, the mine's revenue was A$266.2 million and had a segment operating result of A$72.1 million
In June 2009, OZ Minerals announced that a trunnion bearing failure on its mill at Golden Grove had put the mill out of service for almost a month, shortly before the approval of the sale of the mine, but operations resumed in July 2009.

Production

Production figures for the mine: 1
YearCopperGoldLeadSilverZinc
200122,249 t5,356 oz4,937 t975,146 oz77,569 t
200219,500 t10,300 oz4,937 t899,500 oz34,571 t
2003
2004
200521,808 t25,272 oz4,949 t2,174,620 oz70,508 t
200610,811 t49,354 oz11,458 t3,005,611 oz138,817 t
200715,404 t48,807 oz8,119 t3,165,408 oz131,954 t
200818,467 t47,755 oz13,300 t3,157,837 oz139,900 t
2009**16,658 t0.9 million oz2,662 t818,050 oz36,375 t