Costerfield project

Where the vast majority of Australian mines use large modern machines to extract ore, the Costerfield Project, a gold and antimony underground mine in Central Victoria, still relies on the old manual method of mining and it does so with an impeccable safety record.

Costerfield Project Owned by AGD Mining
The Costerfield underground mining project owned by AGD Mining, a
fully owned subsidiary of Canadian mining company, Mandalay Resources Corporation, is located 100 kilometres north of Melbourne. It is a gold and antimony producing mine with an ore body that averages only 300 millimetres in width. This narrow vein requires the use of narrow-vein hand held stoping and development equipment.

Mining at the Ore Face Undertaken by Hand Held, air Operated Equipment
The Costerfield Project necessitates mining at the face to be carried out manually by hand held, air operated, drilling tools. Workers use this equipment during their 12 hour shifts for seven days straight before getting seven days time off. The company pays for its workers to attend muscular- skeletal specialists on their days off to ensure they get proper massage, acupuncture and any other treatment found necessary to help maintain their bodies at the highest possible standard.

Intensive Training Program to Perfect Mining Skills
The company is also proud of the fact that their intensive training programs teaches drill operators the right way to use their equipment over long hours without damaging their bodies in any way. The hand held drills weigh about 60 kilograms, or more, and it takes about two years before operators are completely skilled in the most efficient way of using them. Costerfield Project mine management claim the best users of these hand held drills are not necessarily big strong men, some are but more slightly built men are still capable of matching their larger work mates once they get the technique right. They insist the secret is in mastering balance and technique.

Hand Held Equipment More Efficient for Narrow Vein Mining
AGD Mining believe they will eventually move away from manual mining methods but at the present time there are no comparable machines on the market that work as efficiently as men with hand held equipment when accessing narrow veins.
New Reserves Keeping Pace with Depleted Ore Bodies at Costerfield Project
Mandalay Resources Corporation purchased the Costerfield Project through its 100 percent subsidiary, AGD, from Western Coal on December 1, 2009. It immediately got down to work and by the end of 2010 was producing more than 5,000 tonnes of ore a month. It continued this level of production throughout 2011. At the same time it was discovering sufficient reserves to replace the depleting ore bodies it was mining.

Ore Processed at Brunswick Processing Plant
The ore extracted from the Costerfield Mine is taken to the Brunswick Processing Plant where it is stockpiled before being blended into the crusher. From there it is ground by means of a primary and secondary ball mill, rougher, scavenger, a cleaner flotation process and finally filtered. The ensuring concentrate is taken to the Melbourne port for exporting to Chinese smelters.
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The Costerfield Project is located near the small town of Costerfield in Central Victoria, 50 kilometres east of Bendigo and 10 kilometres from Heathcote. It has tenements covering over 7,000 hectares with more than 1,200 hectares held as mining leases, the balance being in exploration licences.