History
«Seligdar» placer miner Guild was established by the decision of the executive committee of Aldan administrative district of the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1974 and during the first year of its operation started exploring the deposit sites of the river Seligdar and river Orto-Saala and had extracted 144 kilograms of gold over the season. Between 1976 and 1980 eight new placer gold deposits have been explored. Gold extraction output in 1980 reached 580 kilograms.
From 1980 to 1998 the Guild kept increasing the production rate, bringing the processed rock mass to 5.5 million cubic meters and gold extraction to 900 kilograms in 1996.
Because of depletion of the placer gold reserves, starting from 1995 the Guild has been investigating the possibilities of gold extraction at the lode gold deposits. Heap leaching technology of gold extraction was selected as the first priority.
In 1996 pilot project of gold extraction from the ore refuse bank of «Lopukhovsky» mine was initiated. Implementation of this technology required substantial financial, material and moral expenses.
The problem was that this technology was not conventional and had never been used in the climatic conditions of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). In the process of pilot operations the Guild has accumulated extensive experience of application of this new technology and hired necessary specialists. In 1998 the Guild, having performed geological survey with the use of its own resources, obtained «Samolazovskoye» lode gold deposit with the reserves of 10 tons of gold. Gold extraction at Samolazovskoye mining complex proved to have substantially lower prime cost compared to the traditional methods used by the Guild.
Development of Samolazovskoye deposit, commissioning of the mining complex at Mezhsopochnoye in 2004 and Garbuzovskoye in 2005 allowed the guild to restructure the gold extraction operations, completely exclude placer gold extraction and increase the output of the precious metal in 2005 to 1.7 tons.
In 2006, the project of development of Nizhneyakokitskoye ore field resulted in creation of a new mining enterprise - Seligdar Gold OJSC. During 2006, the rated output of the facilities was increased and new equipment was purchased.
In 2007, Seligdar Gold OJSC had doubled the reserves by means of obtaining the license for development of the Ryabinovoye site. Total gold reserves in the commercial categories C1+C2 amounted to 50 tons, recognized forecasted reserves in P1+P2 categories – 25.4 tons.
