Mining begins at Reward underground

Vertex Minerals (ASX: VTX) has commenced underground production at its Reward gold mine in NSW following a successful first blast over the weekend.

The milestone, targeting the Lady Belmore reef, keeps the company on track to commence processing of high-grade stope ore at the gravity processing plant until full scale operations begin at Reward.

The startup mine schedule, as previously announced, includes mining 2,075t at 17.8g/t of gold from a developed airleg stop block with the planned stope width the same as the interpretation of the mineralisation.

Reward’s underground mining operation has a current resource of 225,000oz at 16.7g/t and Vertex aims to have at least four mining fronts at the site while maintaining a continuous feed to the nearby processing plant.

Recent milestones at Reward include the underground 11KVA to 1000V transformer substation being installed, access drives to the sites two starter stopes being cleaned for drilling to commence and decline three on the mica vein being fully dewatered to provide further feed to the gravity plant.

Vertex continues to expand its operations across Australia with tenements across WA including its Taylor Rock project in the far southeastern region of the Archaean Lake Johnston greenstone belt.