Alba Mineral Resources plc said it had produced high-grade gold of up to 17.22g/t from fines taken from the historic waste tip at its Clogau-St David’s gold mine in North Wales.
REFINERY
The trenching programme has to date seen nearly 33 tonnes of <20mm material excavated from the tip.
Alba produced four concentrates from composite samples of <20mm material from each trench to assess the gold content within the excavated trenches.
From trench one, 1.1 grams of gold recovered from 66.04 kg of sample (dry weight) equated to a back-calculated head grade of 6.0 g/t or 0.19 troy oz/t.
The company recovered 2.9g gold from 60.63 kg of sample from trench three, equating to 17.22 g/t or 0.55 oz/t.
From trench four, 1.1g gold from 74.26 kg of sample, equated to 5.33 g/t or 0.17 oz/t.
The material will undergo primary processing at Alba’s on-site gravity processing plant and then sent to an off-site gold refinery.
The company said that gold produced from the refinery had returned “significantly higher” grades from the tip than previous results indicated.
This suggested that previous laboratory assay results had “significantly underrepresented” the tip’s gold content and consequently “greatly” enhanced the economics of mining the whole tip.
Executive chairman George Frangeskides added that Alba would complete processing the batch of 33 tonnes before sending gold concentrates to the refinery.