Nalunaq Greenland's First Gold Mine!
History
’Nalunaq’ is the Greenlandic name of Greenland’s first gold mine and means the place that is hard to find.
The opening of Nalunaq IN 2004 was a milestone for Greenland, being its first gold mine and the first new mine to be developed in the country for over 30 years.
The mine is located in Kirkespirdalen (Church steeple valley) near the town of Nanortalik.in the southernmost tip of Greenland and is a Proterozoic narrow-vein, high-grade gold deposit.
The terrain is a glacial valley with mountain peaks reaching 1,200-1,600 m above sea level. There is a river, fed by mountain streams of melting snow that runs to the fjord some 20 km to the west.
Nalunaq mountain, which hosts the gold deposit, is 1,340 m high and is located in a wide glacial valley reaching into the Saqqa Fjord about 9 km from the mine site.
Transportation to Nalunaq takes approximately 40 minutes by helicopter from the international airport at Narsarsuaq. Deep fjords allow access for shipping and the overall climate is sub arctic allowing full access around the year.
In 2004 the mining company Crew Gold Corporation (“Crew”) was granted a licence to exploit the gold deposit at Nalunaq. The license covers an area of 16 km² around the mine site.
Before commencing mining operations, Crew completed over 30,000 metres of diamond drilling and established that the gold is in a quartz intrusion in a granite like host rock. The structure is quite uniform with the quartz varying in thickness from 0.75 metre to 1.5 metres but the gold distribution is not evenly dispersed. Production commenced in mid-2004 and continued until the end of 2008. Over the period, Crew completed more than 19,000 metres of tunnelling and produced 308,000 ounces of gold.
They operated the mine with sub-contract miners from Canada and, as they had no licence to process on site, they shipped mined ore to Newfoundland for processing. Rising oil prices and shipping costs made the economics progressively more difficult.
A New Beginning
Angel Mining (Gold) A/S (“Angel”), a wholly owned subsidiary of Angel Mining plc, purchased the Nalunaq mining assets in July 2009 for US$1 million and are now due to pay a further US$500,000 to complete the acquisition of the mine, which could not take place until the company had received formal approval of the Greenlandic government, which was confirmed in late September.
Assets acquired include mining equipment, a fully operational mine camp and ship loading harbour facilities located close to the town of Nanortalik at the southern tip of Greenland.
Angel is submitting revised mining and environmental plans to the Bureau of Mines and Petroleum in Greenland and hopes to restart mine production before the end of 2009.
The target annual production rate will be approximately 25,000 ounces of gold per year.
Angel will use innovative techniques to operate the mine profitably.
The deposit reposes at a fairly constant 35o and the company intends using an offset room and pillar mining method that will enable it to use existing mining equipment and employ predominately local labour. Preparatory work is already under way for the construction of a processing plant inside the mine. Initially this will be based on gravity separation which should recover approximately 50% of the recoverable gold and it is then hoped that a cyanide leaching circuit will be added, subject to environmental and government approval. Once this development takes place the recoverability should increase to approximately 95%.
By adopting this approach, Angel will eliminate the costs of shipping and external processing, which proved to be such a heavy burden for Crew.
Further work is planned on the assessment of the remaining resource. The deposit is ‘nuggety’ by nature which means that diamond drill exploration results are extremely variable and interpretation of the recoverable gold is more difficult than it would be if the gold was more evenly dispersed within the host rock.
Polar Coins
On the occasion of International Polar Year 2007-09 Denmark’s National Bank issued three thematic coins with motifs from the polar regions.
The gold coin is made of gold obtained from the Nalunaq Mine.
Gold from the mine was also used for the wedding rings of the Danish Crown Prince and Crown Princess.
It is the first time that a coin has been minted in gold originating from Greenland and the Royal Danish Mint has had gold blanks made exclusively for the striking of the Polar coins.
A small polar bear in the legend on the gold coin indicates that the coin consists of gold originating from Greenland.