BARRICK GOLD LOOKS TO EXPAND ITS ZAMBIAN UNIT AT LUMWANA

Barrick Gold is evaluating potential expansions at its Lumwana copper mine in Zambia.

According to the Bloomberg online, Senior Vice President for Global Exploration, Rob Krcmarov says this could involve doubling throughput at the operation.

The company will complete an expansion study for Lumwana in the second half of 2012, said on a conference call.

Toronto-based Barrick, the world's biggest gold miner, acquired the operation after it agreed in April to buy copper miner, Equinox Minerals for C$7.3 billion, trumping an earlier bid from China's Min-Metals Resources.

Mr Krcmarov has said the company is focusing on exploration at Lumwana, and sees excellent potential for both brownfields and greenfields resource growth.

The company will spend more than US$50 million in 2011 as part of an 18 month exploration program to increase the measured and indicated resource as part of the expansion study.

Lumwana is expected to produce 155-million to 175-million pounds of copper between June 1 and the end of the year, at total cash costs of between $1.75/lb and $1.95/lb.

Barrick is working on improvements at the operation, including mill de-bottlenecking, pit re-optimisation, mine sequencing changes and better dilution control.