The Boddington Gold Mine: the facts and figures.

The Boddington Gold Mine is very large. While it represents just one of four Newmont gold mines in Australia, it will account for over half of our Australian gold production. With an expected one million ounces of gold for the first five years and an average of 850,000 ounces per year over its lifespan, the mine will be one of the largest in Newmont's history.

The Boddington Expansion will utilise the latest techniques in large-scale open cut mining and state-of-the-art processing technology. While previous mining, between 1987 and 2001, removed the copper/gold ore body closest to the surface, the expansion will mine the hard ore that lies beneath the depleted oxide pits.

Quite simply, ore will be blasted, loaded into trucks and taken to a crusher for the first stage in separating gold from the waste. The expansion, therefore, includes the construction of a three-stage crushing circuit with single stage grinding, copper/gold flotation and gold leaching with a carbon in-leaching process. While approvals have been granted for a further land acquisition of about 250 hectares, the project will operate largely within the parameters of the existing footprint.