Wild weather impacting gold mining production

This was due to a series of cyclones moving inland and dumping massive amounts of rain across Australia's main gold producing regions.

Director Sandra Close said almost two dozen mines in Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory reported production problems due to rain and flooding.

"Wet weather makes haul roads dangerous and greasy. Wet ore 'hangs up' in ore bins, is difficult to crush and sticks to conveyor belts," Dr Close said.

"In this quarter, some open pits were flooded and mining ceased. 

"At some underground mines, where the workings are accessed by decline from near the base of an existing open pit. It was impossible to haul ore to the treatment plants."

Cyclones have dumped massive amounts of rain across Australia's main gold producing regions. (Rebecca Le May/AAP PHOTOS)

Fuel oil supply was disrupted at some mines while others reported power outages due to high rainfall damaging power grids causing electricity supplies to fail.

Operations reporting lower gold output, included Tropicana, 330km east of Kalgoorlie which is down 59,000 ounces and Tanami in the central NT which is down 46,000 ounces.

Production increased at Cadia in NSW, up 25,000 ounces compared with the previous quarter and Bellevue, WA, where production increased by almost 22,000 ounces.

However, most companies are maintaining production forecasts for calendar 2024, with production losses aimed to be made up over the remainder of the year.

Australia's largest gold producers for the first quarter of 2024 were Boddington, Cadia, Super Pit, Tanami and Cowal.