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Miner Heritage Gold says it will tread carefully if it gets permission to develop the Talisman site near Waihi.
The exploration company has applied for a mining permit on its Talisman and Dominion Knoll exploration permits at Karangahake, at the bottom of the Coromandel Peninsula.
Chief executive Trent Lash said further work was being done to define exactly how ore would be extracted and processed. A permit application could take up to six months and any mining was up to a year away.
In its permit application Heritage is proposing an initial, modest-scale underground mining operation, building to sustained annual production of 50,000 oz gold after about four years.
Large-scale mechanised mining methods may be used as operations develop. Heritage was considering doing small scale hand-held mining itself, although it preferred to introduce a joint-venture partner.
It was not looking to raise more money, Lash said.
"The market is not there to raise more capital. The whole speculative end of the market globally has just gone."
The Talisman Mine, which produced over 4 million oz of bullion, is the second largest gold producer in the region behind the Newmont open-cast mine on the outskirts of Waihi.
He said there had been some overseas interest in the Talisman project in spite of gold prices tumbling from close to US$1000 ($1818) an ounce at the start of the year to around US$740.
The Talisman is a maze of tunnels and shafts and the company says that as an underground operation, it should have minimal impact at the surface.
