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Female Leaders at Polyus: How to get gold from resin

20 March 2020
Female leadership at Polyus: How to get gold from resin

The job of gold ore dressing operator is one of the major professional occupations at the Kuranakh Mine. The role requires close attention to detail, accuracy, and high levels of responsibility and flexibility.

Elena Kravets and Nadezhda Liskun are both seasoned ore dressing operators, with deep knowledge about the industry.

Elena has worked at the mine for 15 years and obtained Proficiency Level 4.She got her foot into the business at the processing plant, then completed her training and practiced her skills. Since then Elena has proved herself to be a reliable and experienced specialist with strong organizational skills, and been promoted to Supervisor.

Nadezhda Liskun started as a trainee. Following mentoring with a seasoned coach, she successfully completed her training and passed all the qualification exams. She is a very valuable asset to her team, having gained the reputation of being a very loyal professional, who has worked with Polyus for over 20 years.

The main duty of the control operators is monitoring the process flow and there is a lot of responsibility involved. Figuratively speaking, the transfer of resin to regeneration for the subsequent extraction of gold lies in their hands. While on shift, they have a huge amount of work to deal with, which requires constant involvement in the technological process.

Elena Kravets commented:

“Checking the meshes of the drainage devices regularly means we have a very full workload. Smaller tanks have six drainage mesh nets, while bigger tanks have 18, and there are 48 tanks in total. Each mesh net must be removed, inspected and, if necessary, replaced, to mitigate any possibility of losing resin that contains gold during the process. Monitoring a loaded resin discharge unit is very time consuming. The resin is pumped, stripped of pulp, sands and impurities. Afterwards, the resin is washed in clean water and pumped for regeneration. This is a labour-intensive and essential process.”

On the back of automated technologies that have been introduced at the plant, the control operations have been simplified considerably. Whereas in the past control operators searched for any malfunctions themselves, deviations and abnormalities are now detected automatically. As a result, Elena and Nadezhda are able to save their time and resources of the whole mine.

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