Irokinda

The mine is located in the Muysky district approximately 75 kilometres from the town of Taksimo, where the Baikal-Amur railroad station and airport are located, and is accessible from an all-season road.

The nearest settlement is Irakinda, located 4 km to the south, which services the mine.

The mine supports more than 700 jobs.

Production Flow

Mining

Underground mining operations at Irokinda are focused on three separate vein areas:

• Visokaya-Poperechnaya (“Visokaya mine”);
• Serebryakovskaya-Sluchainaya (“Serebryakovskaya mine”); and
• Medvezhya-Poperechnaya-Tuluinskaya (“Tuluinskaya mine”).

Processing

The Irokinda processing plant has two crushing stages, two grinding stages using ball mills, followed by gravity separation, which produces concentrates for both the gravity and flotation circuits. The gravity circuit is used to recover free gold, after which smelting produces doré bars. Flotation is used to recover finer gold particles into a flotation concentrate. The flotation concentrate is sold to a third party treatment plant where it is processed in a conventional CIP circuit.

Environment

The Irokinda mine is in a remote location in the Muysky district of the Republic of Buryatia. The mine camp is in the Irakinda settlement (4 km to the south), which has approximately 600 inhabitants. The entire population of the Muysky district is about 9,643 people with most of the people (7,667) living in Taksimo town, 50 km to the north-west.

There are no specially protected territories nearby.

The Irokinda environmental management programme focuses on compliance with legislation and permits. The mine and the Nordgold corporate office review the mine’s compliance with legislation and corporate standards regularly.

For over six years Irokinda has been arranging the annual release of hundreds of thousands of juvenile fish of Siberian sturgeon to Lake Baikal and the rivers flowing into it and their tributaries.

This is a complex logistical and scientific challenge, but the repopulation of fish has a significant benefit to the health of the local water systems, with associated knock-on benefits.

Community Support

The Irokinda mine arranges an annual Social Projects Contest, through which the mine provides funding for a number of small development initiatives proposed by local residents. Annually, the mine provides grants to finance approximately 10 such local projects, mainly aiming to support the development of local tourism, recreation and social infrastructure and improving youth education facilities. Irokinda also regularly provides charity and material assistance to residents of local communities.

Contacts