Gold is one of the biggest exports of Australia. It is one of the biggest market that boost the economy of Australia. Australia is the second biggest producer of gold in the world next to China. ¾ of the gold in Australia comes from Western Australia. Western Australia also host two thirds of the gold resource in Australia.
The largest gold producer in Australia is the Newcrest Mining Company. This company has five mines in Australia. In New South Wales, Cadia Valley Operations produces the largest amount of copper and gold. This is also one of the biggest producers of gold in Australia. Cadia valley is situated at the central western New South Wales. This is just 250 km west of Sydney. The operations of Cadia Valley includes the large, low grade Cadia Hill open pit mine and also the higher grade Ridgeway underground mine.
The Cracow mine can be found situated at central Queensland, Australia. This is just 500km northwest of Brisbane. The development, refurbishment and upgrade of the underground mine of the already existing treatment plant was approved by participants of the joint venture back in 2002. the development of the mine started in December of 2003. The first gold production was during November of 2004. The Cracow Joint Venture is managed and operated by the Newcrest Mining Company.
Newcrest Mining puts A$1.91 nillion for the development of the underground panel cave mine which will extract the orebody in Cadia East. This orebody is the biggest gold deposit of the world. This has a very huge amount of high grade gold and copper. Cadia East mine is going to become the biggest underground mine in Australia. Newcrest is expecting the production of mine in the Cadia Valley operations for the next 30 years at least.
The construction of the Cadia East underground mine was approved and commenced in April 2010. The construction includes modification, development and more. Bulk underground mining technologies will also be developed in this area. This includes the utilization of automatic remote loaders. The production in this area is expected to begin on 2012. This will be followed by the appreciable and commissioning production on 2013. They expect to have a very huge expense for producing the gold and other minerals in this area, but the return of investment that they are expecting is so much bigger. They will be developing state of the art underground structures in this area. They will invest so much in this area because they know the potential of this place already. Underground mining will boost this company even more. Newcrest Mining is even expecting to increase their productions in this area and the rest of the mines that they own and operate.
