Warrawoona Gold Project: Reserves, Output, ESG Data

Reviewed September 2026 against Mining Weekly’s feasibility study coverage, Standards Australia’s mining sustainability framework, and the EPA Western Australia approval record.

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The Warrawoona gold project is a Pilbara gold development in Western Australia built around a 519,000-ounce proven-and-probable reserve, with a 2020 feasibility study modelling 658,000 ounces of total production across an 8-year mine life at an average of 90,000 ounces per year in years 1-7 (Mining Weekly, feasibility study coverage). The project’s operator, Calidus Resources, entered receivership in July 2024, which is the single most important fact for anyone searching “warrawoona gold mine” today: the asset and its environmental approvals still exist, but the operating company that built the feasibility case does not. This article lays out what the numbers actually said, what has changed, and how to verify the current ownership and operating status yourself.

Table of Contents

Current Status: What Changed Since the Feasibility Study

Searches for “warrawoona gold project” and “warrawoona gold mine” are being served by pages that repeat the original feasibility-study numbers as if they describe an operating mine today. They do not. The reserve and production figures below come from Calidus Resources’ 2020 feasibility study, reported by Mining Weekly in an article covering the project’s construction decision (Mining Weekly, 2021). Since then, Calidus Resources entered receivership in July 2024. That means:

• ✔ The 519,000 oz reserve and 658,000 oz feasibility-study production total are engineering estimates from the 2020-2021 study period, not a current operating record.
• ⚠ The all-in sustaining cost (AISC) of $1,290/oz quoted below is a feasibility-study projection, not a disclosed current operating cost — no operator has published a fresh AISC for Warrawoona since Calidus’s receivership.
• ➖ Anyone evaluating the project now — as an investor, a supplier, or a landholder — needs to check current ownership before treating any of these numbers as live.

How to check current status yourself: search the ASX company announcements platform for “Calidus Resources” and “Warrawoona” to see receivership and any sale filings, and check Western Australia’s Department of Energy, Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety (DEMIRS) mining tenement register for the current tenement holder of the Warrawoona project area. Those two sources will tell you who — if anyone — is currently operating the asset, which no static article can guarantee to stay current.

Reserves, Production Profile and Mine Life

The feasibility study underpinning the Warrawoona gold project reported a JORC-compliant reserve of 519,000 ounces (proven plus probable), supporting a modelled mine life of 8 years (Mining Weekly, 2021). The production schedule was front-loaded: years 1 through 7 were modelled to average 90,000 ounces per year, with total production across the full mine life reaching 658,000 ounces — the gap between 7 × 90,000 (630,000 oz) and the 658,000 oz total reflects a lower-output final year as the reserve tapers.

These are engineering targets from a study period, not audited production results — Warrawoona never reached full commercial production before Calidus’s 2024 receivership, so there is no multi-year track record of actual ounces poured to compare against the study. If a current operator resumes the project, the first verifiable test of these numbers will be quarterly production reports filed with the ASX, which is the correct place to check for real (not modelled) output.

Project Economics: Costs, Gold Price and Margins

The feasibility study modelled an all-in sustaining cost (AISC) of $1,290 per ounce (Australian Mining, construction announcement). That figure was set against gold prices prevailing around 2020-2021. Gold has moved a long way since: spot gold was trading around $3,685 per ounce in September 2025, per commodity market data (Trading Economics).

At the study-era AISC against a September 2025 spot price, the theoretical margin per ounce would be roughly $2,395 — but that comparison is illustrative only, because a 2020-era cost estimate does not reflect 2025-2026 input costs for diesel, labour, steel and cyanide in the Pilbara. Mining costs have generally risen since 2021 across the Australian sector; without a republished AISC from a current Warrawoona operator, the honest position is that no current cost figure for this specific project is publicly available. To get one, check the ASX announcements platform for any post-receivership operator’s quarterly cash cost disclosures, or Geoscience Australia’s annual minerals industry survey for Pilbara-region average AISC ranges.

Gold spot price is one of the few inputs here that refreshes daily and is easy to check yourself: Trading Economics and the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) both publish current XAUUSD pricing free of charge (Trading Economics, gold).

Geological Setting of the Warrawoona Project

Warrawoona sits within the Pilbara region’s Archaean greenstone belts, a geological setting recognised globally for hosting gold in quartz-vein and sulfide-mineralisation systems. Australia as a whole holds an estimated 17% of the world’s identified gold resources (commodity market data via Trading Economics), and the Pilbara greenstone terrain is one of the reasons Western Australia carries a large share of that endowment. The structural complexity of these greenstone zones is exactly what makes systematic, wide-area exploration expensive with conventional ground methods — ore zones are discontinuous, and quartz-vein/sulfide targets do not sit in a simple, predictable geometry.

Environmental Approval and Water Use

The Warrawoona project received environmental approval from the Environmental Protection Authority of Western Australia, which set conditions covering fauna habitat protection and offset requirements (EPA Western Australia). What is not publicly disclosed, and should not be guessed at, is the specific dollar value of the environmental offset fund contribution or the exact biodiversity targets attached to that approval — those financial and ecological terms are not published in the sources reviewed for this article. To find them, request the EPA’s approval conditions document directly from the EPA WA media and publications office, which typically publishes the full statement of reasons for board-recommended approvals.

On water: gold processing across the Australian industry consumes on the order of 250 megalitres of water per tonne of gold produced, according to water-industry analysis of mineral-specific consumption (Moerk Water). That is an industry-wide Australian benchmark, not a Warrawoona-specific disclosure — no site-specific water consumption figure for Warrawoona has been published, since the project has not operated at commercial scale. Tailings storage facility engineering details — liner specification, storage volume, seepage monitoring — are likewise not available in public sources for this project; those specifics would appear in the mine’s Works Approval or Mining Proposal filed with DEMIRS, which is the correct document to request if you need them.

Australian Mining Sustainability Standards Applying to Warrawoona

Any operator resuming Warrawoona will need to work within the same regulatory and voluntary-standards environment as every other Australian gold project. Two figures are useful benchmarks here:

• 💧 70% of Australian gold mines employed sustainable water management and recycling practices, per a 2024-2025 industry sustainability survey (Standards Australia).
• 🌏 The Australian gold sector has set a sector-wide 30% carbon emissions reduction target under ESG commitments tied to the NGERS (National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Scheme) framework (Anthesis Group, ESG standards analysis).

There is also a structural change coming to how any future Warrawoona operator will have to report: the Global Reporting Initiative’s GRI 14 Mining Sector Standard takes effect in 2026, setting a new global baseline for sustainability and climate reporting specific to mining companies (Mining Magazine). Any company that restarts Warrawoona will report against this standard going forward, which is a more useful thing to track than any single year’s emissions number, because it defines the reporting method rather than one point-in-time result.

How Warrawoona Compares to Australian Gold Sector Benchmarks

The table below separates what the Warrawoona feasibility study modelled from what is verifiable as a current, sector-wide Australian benchmark. This distinction matters more than any single number: a reader comparing Warrawoona to “the industry” should know which side of this table each figure sits on.

Satellite Verification: How Farmonaut Reads a Project Like This

Farmonaut’s satellite mineral detection platform uses multispectral and hyperspectral imagery to identify spectral signatures associated with alteration and mineralisation, which is directly relevant to a greenstone-hosted project like Warrawoona where structural targets are discontinuous and expensive to chase on the ground. This is not a substitute for the feasibility, reserve, or ownership questions above — those are matters of public record and company filings, not satellite data — but it is directly useful for two related tasks: verifying surface disturbance at a known project against approval conditions, and screening adjacent greenstone terrain for undiscovered targets before committing to ground surveys.

• ✔ Early-stage target screening in structurally complex greenstone belts, without ground disturbance
• ✔ Cost reduction of up to 80-85% in initial resource discovery and ground-targeting compared to blanket field surveys
• ✔ Surface monitoring of disturbance footprint against EPA-approved boundaries over time
• ✔ Objective, repeatable mapping over large tenement areas before any drilling commitment

The satellite based mineral detection platform works across multiple minerals and regions, and for structurally complex terrain specifically, the Satellite Driven 3D Mineral Prospectivity Mapping approach builds a multidimensional model of a target area to help prioritise where a limited drilling budget should go.

Evaluating a Pilbara-region gold target, or want to screen ground before you commit drilling budget? Get a Quote, or Contact Us to discuss how satellite-based screening applies to your specific tenement.

Calculator: Warrawoona Mine-Life Value at Your Gold Price Assumption

The feasibility study’s 658,000 oz mine-life total and $1,290/oz AISC are fixed historical inputs, but gold price and your own cost assumptions are not — use the calculator below to see what the modelled mine life would be worth under a gold price and cost assumption you choose.

Assumptions and exclusions: this calculator applies a flat gold price and flat AISC across the entire mine life, which real operations do not experience — actual annual production, costs and gold price all fluctuate year to year. It excludes taxes, royalties, capital expenditure, financing costs and any hedging positions. Default values are the feasibility-study production/AISC figures and the September 2025 spot gold price cited above; replace them with your own assumptions to model different scenarios.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Warrawoona gold project currently operating?

Calidus Resources, the company that carried Warrawoona through feasibility and into construction, entered receivership in July 2024. Check the ASX company announcements platform under "Calidus Resources" for the current status, and DEMIRS's Western Australian tenement register for the current holder of the Warrawoona tenements.

How many ounces of gold does the Warrawoona project hold?

The 2020 feasibility study reported a JORC proven-and-probable reserve of 519,000 ounces, with a total modelled mine-life production of 658,000 ounces over 8 years (Mining Weekly, 2021). These are feasibility-study figures, not an audited depletion record.

What was the projected production cost at Warrawoona?

The feasibility study modelled an all-in sustaining cost of $1,290 per ounce (Australian Mining, 2021). No current operator has published an updated AISC since Calidus's 2024 receivership.

Where is the Warrawoona gold project located?

In the Pilbara region of Western Australia, within Archaean greenstone belt terrain that hosts quartz-vein and sulfide-associated gold mineralisation — the same geological province that contributes to Australia holding an estimated 17% of the world's identified gold resources.

Can satellite technology help evaluate a project like Warrawoona?

Yes for exploration and surface-monitoring questions — satellite based mineral detection can screen structurally complex greenstone terrain and monitor surface disturbance against approval boundaries. It cannot answer ownership, reserve-audit, or financial questions, which require company filings and regulator records.

Conclusion and How to Track Warrawoona Going Forward

The numbers that made Warrawoona a notable Pilbara gold development — a 519,000 oz reserve, a 658,000 oz mine-life production target, a $1,290/oz projected AISC — all come from a 2020-2021 feasibility study, and the company that produced that study, Calidus Resources, entered receivership in July 2024. That does not erase the geology or the environmental approvals already granted; it means anyone relying on this project for an investment, supply, or land-use decision needs a current answer to who holds the tenements now, not a repeat of five-year-old study figures.

The durable way to check this yourself, going forward: search the ASX announcements platform for "Calidus Resources" and "Warrawoona" for receivership and sale updates, check the DEMIRS Western Australian tenement register for current tenement ownership, and if a new operator resumes construction or production, look for their first quarterly report — that is the point at which feasibility-study projections either get confirmed or revised by actual results. The 2026 GRI 14 Mining Sector Standard will also apply to any future operator's sustainability disclosures, giving you a consistent reporting framework to compare against future Pilbara gold projects.

Evaluating a Pilbara gold tenement, or need satellite-based screening before committing to drilling? Contact Us or request a custom quote.