KCGM is a world famous large, high quality, long-life open-pit and underground gold mine located in the globally renowned Golden Mile Region of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Western Australia, with the open pit often just referred to as the Super Pit. Some 465,000 oz of gold was produced in FY2020 (100% basis), making it one of the largest gold mines in Australia. The Golden Mile has produced in excess of 65 Moz of gold.

In November 2019, Saracen Mineral Holdings Ltd purchased Barrick Gold Corporation’s 50% stake in KCGM. In January 2020, Newmont Goldcorp sold its 50% share of the operations to Northern Star Resources Ltd. The new KCGM JV was now 100% Australian-owned.

The KCGM JV recently announced the results of a strategic review carried out since the ownership change. The in-depth review has established KCGM as along-life asset with a growing production profile and significant exploration upside, all in a Tier 1 location. KCGM’s outstanding future is underpinned by JORC compliant Reserves of 9.7 Moz (after depletion of 293,000 oz)and JORC compliant Resources of 19 Moz. This landmark JORC compliant Reserve provides an extended mine life visibility of 15 years, with significant exploration upside which points to further growth.

Despite just over six months of new ownership, KCGM is already benefiting from the increased focus:

• Landmark Reserves of 9.7 Moz
• Maiden Underground JORC compliant Inferred Mineral Resource at Fimiston of 2.2 Moz @ 2.8 g/t
• Mt Charlotte Underground JORC Compliant Resources of 1.9 Moz
• Improved open pit productivities (49% improvement in total material movement in the recent June quarter 2020)
• Improved underground mining productivities (25% improvement in mined ore tonnes in the recent June quarter 2020)
• A lower risk and lower cost East Wall remediation strategy
• Improved processing productivities and lower unit costs (6% and 16% respectively in the recent June quarter 2020)

Production will rise to over 500,000 oz/y by FY2024 (post-remediation and as Fimiston South becomes dominant ore source and access to high grade Golden Pike North is restored), before climbing to over 675,000 oz/y by FY2028.

A transformation of the open pit operations is underway. Six months ago, only two small and inefficient cutbacks were available to mine (Golden Pike South and Morrison). Today, there are three mining areas available to the shovel and truck fleets (Golden Pike South, Morrison and Oroya Brownhill), with a fourth (Fimiston South Stage 1) scheduled to come on line in the June half 2021. These new cutbacks will boost mining productivities, improve costs, and ensure that higher grades are delivered to the mill by displacing lower grade stockpile feed. New ownership is targeting mining material movements of 70-80 Mt per annum, a significant improvement over recent years.

A mining fleet renewal program will further enhance operational efficiencies by ensuring the timely replacement of some of the current mining fleet that is coming towards the end of its productive life. A new equipment tender is currently underway to source new equipment from reputable manufacturers. It is the JV owners’ intentions to lease finance the equipment over the useable life of the fleet. Major new mining equipment slated for delivery during FY21 includes a Komatsu PC8000 shovel and four 240 t trucks.

A recruitment campaign has recently been launched to attract open pit operators to Kalgoorlie to enable the expansion of material movement to 70-80 Mt/y to take place. A 300 t excavator has been mobilised to site and has been commissioned in the OBH mining front. The excavator has the capability of mining narrower cutback areas in OBH more productively and being more selective during ore mining, minimising dilution and ore loss. This focus is particularly relevant while the operation is currently mill constrained.

The new Fimiston open pit production profile (100% in JORC compliant Reserves) consists of several large mining areas, aiming to consistently maximise fleet productivity. Fimiston South, located at the southern end of the Super Pit, will be KCGM’s single largest cutback in a decade, with a ~10:1 strip ratio (including Inferred Resource material) and ~850 Mt total material movement.

A two stage, 12 year mine life is planned. Stage 1 will commence in the second half of FY2021, and Stage 2 will commence in FY2023. Stage 1 has received full regulatory approval from the relevant government authorities, whilst the application for Stage 2 has been submitted for approval. The staged approach will accelerate access to an earlier ore stream for the Fimiston mill, and appropriately smooth the capital cost of the waste pre-strip across several years. On current plans, FY2022 and FY2023 will be the largest years of waste pre-stripping. Key learnings from over three decades of open pit geotechnical performance and aprogram of geotechnical holes drilled in Fimiston South have de-risked the pit design by defining a stable wall geometry over the significant life of the cutback.

Mining is also underway in the new Morrison cutback. This is effectively the Fimiston South starter pit and will ultimately be encompassed by the much larger Fimiston South cutback.

The 12 year mine plan at Fimiston South is the reward from a substantial investment in exploration over the last three years. Deep directional diamond drilling coupled with in-pit RC drilling has significantly grown the system to the south and at depth. Drilling has targeted the highly continuous mineralised shear zones hosted in the Golden Mile Dolerite and the Paringa Basalt, which remain open in all directions. Infill drilling completed in recent months has provided the confidence to report the JORC compliant Reserves. This drilling has returned a significant number of outstanding drill results that complement the enormous drilling dataset already collected over the previous decades of underground and open pit mining.

Golden Pike is a priority mining front, due to high grades (Reserves 25 Mt @ 2.0g/t) and low strip ratio (average 2.9:1). Although this is the deepest open pit working area at ~600 m below surface, it benefits from the investment made by previous owners. The waste pre-strippingat Golden Pike has been completed in the preceding ~10 years.

Mining continues at the Golden Pike South cutback, whilst the Golden Pike North cutback will commence in FY2024, once the East Wall remediation work is completed under the new Oroya Brownhill plan. The open pit mining schedule from Golden Pike has been slowed down, compared to previous owners, for the following reasons:

• Reduce the risk of being overly reliant on any one ore source
• Focus on quality over quantity with regards to ore mining by reducing dilution and ore loss
• Extend the contribution of higher grade, lower strip ratio ore from Golden Pike
• Enable the existingfleet to be re-deployed to fast-track pre-stripping in new mining areas like OBH & Fimiston South
• Focus on the medium to long term LOMP

The new plan has GoldenPike South finishing in FY2024 (previously FY2021) and Golden Pike North being mined from FY2024 to FY2029 (previously FY2024 to FY2026). Opportunities to fast track mining in these areas will be assessed, but not at the detriment of quality ore mining.

Oroya Brownhill (OBH) has an open pit JORC compliant Reserveof 15 Mt @ 1.5g/t for 710,000 oz. Mining of the OBH cutback commenced in March 2020, following a comprehensive review of various east wall remediation strategies for the May 2018 slip. Eight years of mining is currently planned in two stages, with an average strip ratio of 9.0:1 (including pre-strip) at an average grade of 1.5 g/t. Under new ownership, KCGM has devised a new wall remediation plan (OBH) that involves:

• Bringing the Brownhill cutback forward in the schedule (mining already underway)
• Pushing the north-east wall back by ~80-100 m
• Integrating the east wall remediation zone with the Brownhill cutback

Previously the Brownhill cutback was a smaller, standalone cutback not scheduled until 2022.

Finally looking at underground, since January 2020, over 23,000 m of diamond drilling has been completed across the Mt Charlotte mine area. This new data coupled with the existing historic data has delineated a number of exciting opportunities including Mt Ferrum, Kal East and Little Wonder. These opportunities are all accessible from existing Mt Charlotte infrastructure via the Sam Pearce decline and/or the Cassidy shaft, and will be the focus of ongoing exploration and growth.