The mill at Round Mountain is back online and working at full capacity, after a fire in the mill building in October 2014 temporarily suspended mill operations. The repair job, which took more than 40,000 hours and involved five contractors, was completed on budget and on time, without injury or incident.
Projects Engineer Jarrett Kemmerly called the smooth repair job a testament to Round Mountain’s dedication to health and safety. “Overall, it went very well,” he said.
Bringing the mill back to working order was an enormous construction process that involved repairing or replacing hundreds of pieces of the mill. The team has also taken the repair as an opportunity to conduct some upgrades that had been scheduled prior to the fire – installing new gold shaker tables and samplers for example – and thus have saved future mill down time.
There were no injuries in the October 2014 fire, and it only impacted the mill building. With about 75% of the mine’s production coming from the heap leach facilities, which continued operating as normal, the annual production target for the Americas region was not affected.
After the mill resumed operation on March 15, a barbeque hosted by the new Milling and Crushing Manager Don Weeks was held to thank the many employees involved in the repair job. Lauren Roberts, Senior Vice-President, Americas and Jim Fowler, Vice-President, North America, attended and inspected the mill’s progress.
The Round Mountain mill now back operating at full capacity.
