Above: At a portal of the Phuoc Sun Gold Mine.
We had planned to to visit My Son today … hahaha! My Son are Angkor-like ruins reachable as a day-trip from Hoi An.
But we had an interesting offer from friends of friends from New Zealand who operate a gold mine here. The offered to take us for a visit to their underground mine!
We were picked up by Russell, the VP of Finance, and his driver at 8am for a 3 hour drive to Phuoc Sun Gold Mine located near Dak Sa … which is in fact near the Lao border. The mine employs about 400 staff, many of whom are locals. Being Kiwi-owned, management are from New Zealand and some supervisory staff are Filipinos with mining experience.
We had a tour of the underground mine where the ore is extracted from the ground. The gold-bearing vein can be quite narrow in parts and was actually rathher distinguishable from the other rock. These are mined away except that some pillars are left to provide support … until man-made forms of support are substituted later. The ore is trucked out of the shaft.
The vein we were shown was one that was quite high in gold content … 30 grams of gold per tonne of ore. 20 grams is considered good, below that still feasible. Something like 200 grams, we’ve been told, is considered a glory hole … woohoo!
Coming back up to the surface, we visited the crushing operations … the ore is crushed to pebble size then to the fineness of sand. These are then dissolved and electrolysed. The electro deposits are then melted and cast into ingots. The entire tour lasted about 90 minutes but did not include the extensive tailing treatment area.
It was a very educational and enjoyable tour which gave us insight into a part of Vietnam few would see! And lunch was good too … lamb chops, fried chicken, fried squid and spaghetti bolognaise … the Vietnamese canteen cooks sure know how to please their Kiwi management!
By the way, our visit comes days just before a very momentous milestone for the mine. In two days time they will pour their first ingot. Four years of hard work, many millions dollars, lots of digging and sweat will culminate in a 6 kg ingot!
Inside Phuoc Sun Gold Mine.