Owner Kinross

 

Kinross acquired a 100% interest in the Fort Knox open pit mine in Alaska in 1998. The mine is located within the Fairbanks mining district, a northeast trending belt of lode and placer gold deposits that comprise one of the largest gold producing areas in the state of Alaska. Access to the Fort Knox mine from the nearby city of Fairbanks is by 34 kilometres of paved highway followed by 8 kilometres of unpaved road. The area has a sub-Arctic climate with long cold winters and short summers.
 

The deposit at Fort Knox is mined by conventional open pit methods. Mining is carried out on a year-round basis, seven days a week and high-grade ore is processed at the carbon-in-pulp mill, which has a daily capacity of between 33,000 and 45,000 tonnes per day.

Fort Knox mines and stockpiles large volumes of low grade ore and mineralized waste material that cannot be economically processed at the existing mill. The new heap leach facility allows the mine to process some of these low-grade materials, as well as zones of lower-grade ore that have not yet been mined. Production from the heap leach began in late 2009.