OceanaGold Philippines Inc. is anticipating an increase in gold and copper production in the second half of the year, according to its parent company’s chief operating officer for Asia-Pacific, Peter Sharpe.
“So we see quarter three will be stronger than quarter two and quarter four will be stronger than quarter three,” said Sharpe.
In the first half of the year, OceanaGold Philippines, which operates the Didipio gold-copper mine in Nueva Vizcaya, produced 49.2 thousand ounces of gold and 5.8 thousand tons of copper.
This marks a decline from the previous year’s production of 65.2 thousand ounces of gold and 6.9 thousand tons of copper, largely due to unplanned downtime in the processing plant. Sharpe said that these issues have been resolved and production capacity has been restored.
Gold production is expected to increase to 70,000 ounces, while copper production is projected to reach 12,000 tons in the second half of the year.
“So we are seeing the capacity throughput be re-established. So we certainly expect Q3 (third quarter) and then Q4 (fourth quarter) to be stronger than Q2 (second quarter),” Sharpe added.
Additionally, a geotechnical review led to a safer underground mining sequence, which could result in slightly lower grades over the next couple of years but will lead to higher grades in the future.
Meanwhile, an underground optimization pre-feasibility study is already in progress to increase the proportion of higher-grade underground ore in the mill feed mix.
Currently, 60% of the mill feed comes from the surface stockpile and 40% from underground ore, but the goal is to reverse this ratio due to the higher gold content in the underground ore. The full results of this study are expected in the first quarter of 2025.
