Modular plants: a practical upgrade path for medium-scale miners

For an operation processing a few hundred tonnes a day, a full greenfield CIP plant is often the wrong answer — the capital is out of reach and the schedule outruns the resource confidence.

A modular approach solves both. Rather than committing to final throughput on day one, the plant is built as a set of standard skids: comminution, leach, adsorption, elution and gold room. Each is fabricated off site, trucked in, and commissioned as a unit.

The advantage is optionality. Throughput can be doubled by adding tanks rather than rebuilding, and the initial capital exposure is a fraction of a conventional build.

The trade-off is unit cost. A modular plant will usually carry a higher cost per tonne than a purpose-built facility of the same capacity. For an operation still proving its resource, that premium buys flexibility worth far more than it costs.