Thursday, April 22, 2010
Millennium Minerals test work to reduce costs at Nullagine Gold Project
Millennium Minerals (ASX: MOY) has reported the metallurgical testing results from a diamond core drilling programme completed late last year at the company’s Nullagine Gold Project in the East Pilbara District of Western Australia.
The small core drilling programme was designed to obtain sufficient mineralised whole rock samples to conduct confirmatory metallurgical testing and to provide spatial coverage over a number of the gold ore bodies.
Gold recoveries of 95% were achieved from a conventional leach at a 75 micron grind size.
High levels of gravity recovered gold, up to 52% from some ore sources, and confirm the inclusion of the gravity circuit in the process plant design and capital estimate.
Significant recovery of gold in the gravity circuit should result in downstream reagent cost saving and higher overall gold recovery.
Millennium said test work results show gold recovery well above the feasibility figures warranting a review of the base case assumptions used.
The Nullagine Gold Project is a 1.13 million ounce gold resource contained within 7 deposits on granted mining leases.
The largest deposit is Golden Eagle located approximately 10 km south of the township of Nullagine and contains 68% of the total Mineral Resource inventory.
Much of the permitting and design work for a nominal 1 million tonne per annum Carbon-In-Leach (CIL) processing facility has been completed providing for an early start to development.
The short diamond core drilling programme totalling 9 holes for 203 core metres was completed in December.
The company said the current flow sheet, capital costs and operating costs are formulated and designed on the basis of a worst case scenario, in terms of ore hardness, reagent usage and ore type.
Brian Rear, chief executive officer, said the test work program demonstrates that the company can potentially reduce capital and operating costs in the process area of the proposed operation and revise the base case gold recovery assumption upwards.
http://www.proactiveinvestors.com.au/companies/...d-project-6638.html