Paddington

The Paddington gold mining operations near Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, is wholly owned by Norton Gold Fields which is majority owned by the large Chinese gold mining company, Zijin Mining Group Company Limited.

Paddington Gold Mining Tenements Give a Life of Mine of at Least 10 years
The Paddington mining tenements cover an area totalling 678 square kilometres in the rich Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia centred Kalgoorlie itself. The main points regarding the Paddington operations, that has a life of mine exceeding 10 years, are as follows:

- Eighty highly prospective zones that have been identified as having high quality resource potential
- Measured, Indicated and Inferred Resources in 26 different projects that total 6.03 million ounces of gold
- Nine projects of Proven and Probable Ore Reserves containing 1.03 million ounces of gold

Much of the Paddington tenements, however, remain largely unexplored further than 100 metres from the surface. This gives future exploratory programs much reason to be optimistic as to their possible potential.

The Paddington Mill is a Valuable Company Asset
Besides the known and proven reserves and the potential to discover further gold bearing ore deposits at depth within the tenements held by Norton Gold Fields at the Paddington operations, the company's most valuable asset is, without doubt, the Paddington Mill. This gold processing plant is central too, and in close proximity to, all Paddington gold operations.

Since Norton Gold Fields acquired the Paddington Project in 2007 it has made great use of the Paddington Mill by operating it at high levels and keeping it fully utilised at all times. It has reliably performed as to how it was originally designed which is a great testament to its original plan and to the highly honed skills of all members if its metallurgical, production and maintenance teams. During the financial year 2011/12 the Paddington Mill processed 3.7 million tonnes of ore that averaged 1.35 grams of gold a tonnes. This compared to 3.5 million tonnes being milled the year before that averaged a gold grading of 1.48 grams a tonne. The amount of gold produced was 150,695 ounces.

The Paddington gold processing plant was originally designed to process 3.3 million tonnes of ore a year by means of a conventional carbon-in-pulp (CUP) method. This is regarded as being a low cost and efficient way of processing gold. The mill consists of a cone-crusher, ball and SAG mill grinding circuit along with a gravity recovery and cyanide leaching technology. The gold is then taken from a slurry within the leaching circuit and placed on activated carbon prior to pumping the carbon into an elution column that washes the gold into a solution. This gold bearing solution is then put through a series of electro-winning cells that place the gold onto stainless steel cathodes. The cathodes are then rinsed to produce a gold sludge which is dried before smelting the gold into gold dore bullion bars. These gold bars, that contain approximately 80 percent gold, are finally sent to the Perth Mint where they are further refined into pure gold bars.
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