PUMPING water from flooded areas, developing existing shafts and engaging in extensive drilling programs are some of the measures being implemented by Vatukoula Gold Mines Limited in its bid to achieve required mining rates designed to sustain the company into the future.
Speaking to The Fiji Times, VGML general manager David Whittle said despite being faced with challenges like the recent floods and developing low-grade ore at present, he was optimistic that higher yielding ore called stopes would boost VGML's mining operations.
"In order to be able to get to our required levels of production we need enough stopes to mine," he said.
"We measure the amount of stopes we have in production by measuring face length. At the moment our current working face-length is approximately 550 to 600 metres. Ideally to be able to get enough production from the mine we would like 1000m of face length.
"We would then like to extend this by about another 300m in order to give us flexibility in our production. In order to be able to achieve this we need to do a lot of development."