Natascha Viljoen
Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Newmont
Thank you, Tom. As we enter the final quarter of 2024, I'd like to start by re-emphasizing the operational priorities I highlighted at the beginning of the year. Our focus remains on three key objectives. First is making sure that, every person walking through a Newmont site is fully equipped and authorized to do their work safely. Second, is continuing to deliver strong performance from our managed assets, whilst also guiding our non-core assets through a respectful and productive process for divestment. And last is enhancing long-term productivity at every one of our 11 managed Tier 1 and emerging Tier 1 operations.
Turning to the next slide and let's begin with an operational overview. In the third quarter, our managed portfolio delivered a meaningful step-up in production as planned, producing 4% more gold than the second quarter and building momentum for a strong finish to the year with an anticipated 1.8 million ounces of gold in the fourth quarter or an approximately 8% increase over the third quarter. This performance has been largely driven by our six managed Tier 1 operations, which I now will touch on in more detail.
I will start with Tanami. We began accessing higher grades from the Liberator orebody and remain on track to deliver this year's strongest grades in the fourth quarter. At Boddington, we continue stripping in the north and south bits, as planned which is expected to continue through 2025 and will bring forward strong gold and copper grades starting in 2026.
Moving to Penasquito. We delivered steady gold, silver, lead and zinc production in the third quarter from the Chile, Colorado pit and commenced mining ore in the higher gold grade Penasquito well ahead of plan due to efficient stripping. This will result in an increase in gold production in the fourth quarter and into 2025. And importantly, we have signed a new collective bargaining agreement with the union at Pinusquito, which safeguards the rights of all workers and provides a solid foundation for operations at Pinusquito through 2026.
Turning now to Cadia. As factored in our guidance, grades at Cadia are expected to continue declining in the fourth quarter, as we transition to and ramp up Panel Cave 2-3. We are progressing integrated studies to align cave development with life of mine tailings capacity, setting up Cadia for the next three decades of ore feed.
Our focus for tailings is maximizing capacity in the current in pit storage facility, repairing the southern wall of the northern facility that slumped in 2018 and then raising the wall of the southern facility. These efforts are expected to contribute to a period of increased sustaining capital spend at Cadia over the next few years, as we make the necessary, but disciplined investment to remedy and expand the current timing facilities.
At Lihir, we continue to progress the planned shutdown of the primary autoclave, which remains on track to deliver an approximate 50% step-up in gold production in the fourth quarter of 2024, compared to the third quarter. As we look ahead to 2025, our operational focus at Lahir will remain on reducing complexity to deliver more sustainable and predictable results at this Tier 1 operation.
In the short-term, these efforts will result in lower than initially anticipated production next year, due to lower throughput to allow for asset reliability improvement work and changes to the mine sequencing, including the establishment of wider ramps to manage surface water and repositioning all roads to be more effective and efficient. Whilst we complete this work, we will be processing a higher proportion of lower grade stockpiles in 2025, and we anticipate that, gold production next year from Lihir will be largely consistent with this year's and around 250,000 ounces lower than our initial guidance for 2025 that we provided back in February.
Importantly, this work will simplify and improve operations at Lihir for the long-term, establishing it as a more consistent contributor as one of the 11 managed operations in our go forward portfolio. Similarly, at Brucejack, we have taken a step back this year to do the development and drilling work to ensure that we improve our knowledge of this nuggety ore body.
We continue to experience periods of exceptional high grades, including a one day average of 52 grams per tonne last month, and an average of over 20 grams per ton in the same week. As a result of the work we are doing, we anticipate that the gold production next year from Brucejack will also be largely consistent with this year, or around 100,000 ounces lower than our initial guidance for 2025 that we provided back in February.Moving to Ahafo South. In the third quarter, we achieved a significant increase in gold production of nearly 15% over the second quarter, driven by higher mill throughput following the successful girth gear replacement in April and strong grades from our Subika open pit and underground mines.
Looking ahead, we expect our Ahafo South to maintain consistent production levels in the fourth quarter and into next year, before declining in the second half of 2025 when we complete mining activities at the Subika open pit as planned. And finally, during the fourth quarter, we expect to commence mining activities at our Harford North and will stockpile ore to be used to commission the mole next year. This will be an essential milestone for our African business unit as Akyem is divested and production is replaced with new low cost ounces from Ahafo North towards the end of 2025.
Continuing with Ahafo North, we have made notable shift from land clearing and earthworks to constructing the infrastructure for this new mine. The carbon in leach tanks are complete and we continue constructing the crushing, conveying and more infrastructure, which you can see in the photo in our presentation. We've recently completed the lining of the timing storage facility and are establishing the ore roads to begin stripping at this new mine in the fourth quarter.
At the second expansion at Tanami, our focus remains on the concrete lining of the shaft, and we have completed more than a kilometer of this 1.5 kilometer deep production shaft. As you can see in the photo, the winder building is now largely complete and we are preparing to install the wasting machinery, which will be used to raise and lower our people, equipment and ore within the mine shaft once complete.
Our Cadia Panel Caves project is progressing well. At Panel Caves 2-3 we have achieved cave establishment, meaning that, the intended fracturing has begun and gravity is now playing an important role in the mining process. This is a significant milestone for this multi-year project and we are successfully processing gold and copper ore from this cave. Over the next decade, Panel Cave 2-3 is expected to deliver a million ounces of gold and more than 400,000 tons of copper and is anticipated to ramp up to an average of 400,000 gold equivalent ounces between 2027 and 2032.
At Panel Cave 1-2, we continue to advance underground development and the construction of the materials handling system. As a much larger cave, Panel Cave 1-2 is expected to deliver nearly 4 million ounces of gold and more than 700,000 tons of copper over its 15 year cave life. It is anticipated to ramp up to an average of 525,000 gold equivalent ounces between 2030 and 2040.
With that, I'll turn it over to Karyn.
