Cadia east

The Cadia East underground mine is located in the Central West Region of New South Wales, 25 kilometres from the Regional Centre of Orange and 250 kilometres west of Sydney. It is fully owned by Newcrest Mining Limited and one of the largest gold mines in Australia.

Cadia East Mine is Part of the Cadia Valley Operations

The Cadia East mine is part of Newcrest Mining's Cadia Valley Operations that includes the Cadia Hill open cut mine, the Ridgeway underground mine and the Cadia East mine. The Cadia East mine began commercial production of gold on January 1, 2013.

Cadia East Mine is the First Panel Cave Mine of its Kind to Be Developed in Australia

The Cadia East underground gold mine is a large panel cave mine, the first of its kind to be developed in Australia and one of the largest gold mines in the world with a production rate of 27 million tonnes of ore a year. It is also the largest hard rock underground mine in Australia and when it reaches full capacity in 2017 it will take the Cadia Valley Operations annual production from 447,000 ounces of gold to 700,000 ounces.

Cadia East Panel Cave One, 1.2 kilometres below the surface, began commercial production in January, 2014, Panel Cave Two is due to be completed in 2015. The mineral resource at Cadia East totals 2.8 billion tonnes which, during its life of 30 years, is expected to produce 7.5 million tonnes of copper and 37 million ounces of gold. It has created around 1,900 indirect and direct jobs.

Cadia East Mine is an Industry Leader in Innovation

The Cadia East mine is a leader in innovation and has created considerable international interest because of the bulk caving method of underground mining being undertaken at the site. During the development stage the Cadia East orebody was pre-conditioned by hydraulic facturing, blast pre-conditioning and the thorough blasting of an undercut to make certain the ore body was fractured sufficiently in the correct places to ensure caving occurred.

The undercut at the Cadia East mine was created 20 metres above the extraction point and designed to initiate caving. The undercut comprised hundreds of drawpoints and drawbells that funnel the ore to the collection point. The ore is progressively drilled and blasted in order to create the cavity into which the overlying ore can cave. The ore is then removed from the bottom of each drawbell to be taken to a very large gyrating crusher where it is resized before being taken to the surface where it is processed. In this way the natural stress from the cave assists in the breaking of the rock.

Miners at the Cadia East mine carry out all the necessary preconditioning then, as the undercut level develops it determines itself where the stresses are going to occur. This is the stress that starts the breaking of the rock which leads to the caving. The mine has seismic monitoring equipment placed around the mine to keep an eye on where the seismic activity is taking place, so, if necessary, change where they are undercutting in order to use that stress level in order to break the rock. The main point being that all that is really needed is for the rock to begin caving. Newcrest Mining worked with Codelco, its block caving partner, to develop the technology before putting it to use at the Cadia East mine.

The Cadia East mine is an industry leader in the automotion of underground mining. Although the boggers do require assistance in loadingthe ore, it is after they are loaded when the automation takes over. At this point in time the machine alerts the operator at the Site Asset Operation Centre (SAOC) on the surface. From here on the SAOC operator is able to direct the blogger to any part of the mine site. This technology reduces cost as drivers are no longer required. It also improves safety underground. The SAOC operator works in a dust free environment among TV screens, graphs and data to assist him or her in making mining decisions.

SAOC operators do not have to have obtained a mining degree, or have any previous mining experience, as personnel are trained on site. People who are handy and at home with computers are made welcome.