Short term mine planning and grade control practice at the Mesquite mine

The Mesquite mine is a large, open pit, heap leach gold mine owned and operated by Gold Fields Operating Co.-Mesquite. The mine uses a fully integrated mine planning and reserve modeling software system developed at the mine. This system has recently been extended to include short-term mine planning, grade control, and daily production reporting. The grade control portion of the program uses a multiple indicator kriging (MIK) approach using the blast-hole spacing and exploration assays. The program permits ore control geologists and mine planning engineers to have immediate access to all the information.