The St Ives Gold Mine is a

gold mine Gold mining is the extraction of gold by mining. Historically, mining gold from alluvial deposits used manual separation processes, such as gold panning. The expansion of gold mining to ores that are not on the surface has led to more comple ...

located 20 km south-east of Kambalda,

Western Australia Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...

. It is owned by

Gold Fields Gold Fields Limited (formerly The Gold Fields of South Africa) is one of the world's largest gold mining firms. Headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa, the company is listed on both the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) and the New York St ...

. As of 2022, it is one of four mines the company operates in Australia, the others being the Agnew,

Granny Smith The Granny Smith is an List of apple cultivars, apple cultivar that originated in Australia in 1868. It is named after Maria Ann Smith, who Fruit tree propagation, propagated the cultivar from a chance seedling. The tree is thought to be a Hybri ...

and Gruyere. Ore is mined at St Ives in three underground and four

open-pit Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique that extracts rock (geology), rock or minerals from the earth. Open-pit mines are used when deposits of commercially ...

operations.Review of International Operations - St Ives Gold Mine
Gold Fields, retrieved 2009-08-13

History

Gold mining in the area south of

Lake Lefroy Lake Lefroy is a large ephemeral salt lake in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia. It is north of Lake Cowan and approximately south of Boulder. The town of Kambalda is on the northern shore and the hamlet of Widgiemooltha ...

began as early as 1897 in small-scale operations but large-scale mining only began from 1920 onwards. In late 1919, prospector Pat Ives discovered gold further south from the original workings, with the gold mining district subsequently named after him. A number of mines started operating in the area in the early 1920s, the largest of these being the Ives Reward Mine, which operated until 1926 and produced 7,115 ounces of gold throughout its operation. Including the Redhill Gold Mine at Kambalda, north of Lake Lefroy, the gold mining district produced 19,000 ounces of gold throughout this time. WMC did some exploration in the area in 1937 but did not carry out any mining during this time, with the St Ives district seeing very little gold mining all up during the following decades. WMC returned to prospecting in the area in 1966, now in search of nickel. WMC subsequently developed the

Kambalda Nickel Operations Kambalda Nickel Operations or Kambalda Nickel Mine is a surface and underground nickel mine as well as a nickel concentrator, near Kambalda East, Western Australia. The deposit was discovered in 1954 and the mine opened in 1967, operated by WMC ...

which, from 1974 onwards, also produced some gold from the nickel mine. A process plant for gold was eventually added at Kambalda in 1980. By mid-1980, gold exploration south of the lake, at the original St Ives mining location ''Victory'', achieved good results. Consequently, a

Carbon in pulp Carbon in pulp (CIP) is an extraction technique for recovery of gold which has been liberated into a cyanide solution as part of the gold cyanidation process. Introduced in the early 1980s, Carbon in Pulp is regarded as a simple and cheap process. ...

plant was constructed at Kambalda and commenced operations on 23 October 1981 to process ore from St Ives which was officially named the Kambalda Gold Operations. The annual throughput of the process plant at Kambalda was expanded to 750,000 tonnes by 1982, with the gold produced at the mine offsetting WMC's declining profits from nickel caused by a drop in price for the commodity. The increasing size of the gold operation and the difficulty and cost of transporting the ore across the lake to Kambalda led WMC to the decision to construct a separate gold mining plant at St Ives, which was commissioned in May 1988 and eventually expanded to an annual throughput of three million tonnes. In July 1992, the Kambalda Gold Operations were renamed to St Ives Gold Mines and, by December 1982, the WMC operation at St Ives had produced one million ounces of gold. A large number of ore bodies at St Ives have been named after ships present at the 1805

Battle of Trafalgar The Battle of Trafalgar was a naval engagement that took place on 21 October 1805 between the Royal Navy and a combined fleet of the French Navy, French and Spanish Navy, Spanish navies during the War of the Third Coalition. As part of Na ...

, with 13 orebodies named on the eastern side of the main road after British ships and four on the western side after Spanish and French ships. The mine was purchased by Goldfields from WMC in late 2001.''The Australian Mines Handbook: 2003-2004 Edition'', page 124 The combined price for the two Australian operations Goldfields purchased, St Ives and the

Agnew Gold Mine The Agnew Gold Mine, formerly the EMU Mine, is a gold mine located west of Agnew, Western Australia. It is owned by Gold Fields. As of 2022, it is one of four mines the company operates in Australia, the others being the Granny Smith, Gruyere ...

, was US$180 million in cash and US$52 million in Gold Fields shares.

Operation

From 2002, the mine was operated by

Leighton Contractors CIMIC Group Limited (formerly Leighton Holdings) is an engineering-led construction, mining, services and public private partnerships leader working across the lifecycle of assets, infrastructure and resources projects. History Founded in 194 ...

. In 2012, Gold Fields brought operation of the mine in house. St Ives employed 249 permanent staff and 926 contractors in 2009. To reduce emissions and cost from its diesel generators, the mine builds a hybrid energy system with 35 MW of solar power and 42 MW of wind power.

Production

Annual production of the mine:Annual Report 2005
Gold Fields website, retrieved 2009-08-13

References

Bibliography

External links

*
MINEDEX website: Kambalda - St Ives
Database of the

Department of Mines, Industry Regulation & Safety The Department of Energy, Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety is a department of the Government of Western Australia. The department was formed on 1 July 2017, out of the former Department of Mines & Petroleum and Department of Commerce. A ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Ives Gold Mine Gold mines in Western Australia Underground mines in Australia Surface mines in Australia Shire of Coolgardie Gold Fields