Alba Mineral Resources’ sampling at Clogau returns elevated gold grades
(ALBA ) says results from initial sampling of the waste rock dump at the Clogau-St David's Gold Mine have returned elevated gold grades of up to 9.89 g/t.
The purpose of the exercise to sample the waste rock dump at Clogau St David's Gold Mine in Wales was to establish if there was any gold enrichment within the finer size fractions.
The sampling involved the company digging eight pits, with each individual pit dug up to 5m deep and then screening the material to produce a sample of grain size less than 20mm.
Following the analysis of the samples from the eight pits dug by Alba, gold grades of up to 9.89 g/t have been returned from the assay lab. The average grades returned demonstrate up to 4.37 g/t for the fine fractions and 3.80 g/t for the medium fractions, it noted.
The waste rock dump, which is measured to cover 2833m² and to contain around 15,000 tonnes of broken rock, is close to Alba's pilot processing plant and could be mined at low cost, adding another route to near-term gold production at Clogau-St David's Gold Mine.
The company highlighted that the results were shown to be consistent with the gold being coarse in nature and easily freed from its host rock which the company said supports its decision to install a simple gravity processing plant to capture the majority of the gold.
Rudimentary measurements of the dump indicate an in-situ tonnage of c.15,000 tonnes, which implies that up to 5,000 tonnes could be available for processing for gold, Alba noted.
Alba said the waste rock dump sampling results show the spatial variability of the dump (Fig 1) and have given the team a better understanding of how the dump was constructed. It added that this knowledge will be utilised by Alba when mining the tip for processing.
Figure 1: location of Sample Sites and average Fines (<2mm) gold grades
(Source: Alba Mineral Resources)
Looking ahead, Alba intends to focus its near-term efforts initially on the higher-grade zones at the Waste Rock Dump ‘with a view to sampling and excavating to the base of the dump, which will enable a more accurate estimate to be made of overall tonnages and grades.’
Mark Austin, Alba's Chief Operating Officer commented: "These results entrench what we inherently believed in from the start - that the finer size fractions would be relatively enriched in gold content due to the 'free' nature of the gold within the quartz veins.
The waste rock dump is in close proximity to our gravity plant and could be mined at low cost, thereby adding a valuable adjunct to our production options, especially as the potential tonnages involved are significant, running into the thousands of tonnes at economic grades."
View from Vox
In recent weeks, the Company said it had received the first set of assay results back on bulk sample concentrates produced at its pilot processing plant at the Clogau-St David's Gold Mine with the first set of assayed concentrates having returned ‘very notable grades’.
Alba's Executive Chairman, George Frangeskides said the results are demonstrative of how well the pilot plant is working now in producing gold concentrates with high recoveries.
“This bodes well for when we move onto bulk sampling new and previously unmined areas, in particular those new zones which we are defining in the course of our ongoing surface and underground drilling, where we believe the prospects for high-grade mineralisation are much greater,” he said.
Last month, the company announced to investors in its final results for the year ended 30 November 2020 that it intends to create a new Greenland-focused, spin-out company with the aim of unlocking ‘real and sustained value’ for shareholders across the group’s asset portfolio.
Reasons to ALBA
Alba Mineral Resources is a well-diversified exploration and development company which owns and operates mining projects in Greenland, Wales and Ireland. Its strategy is to identify and secure undervalued assets with a diversified commodity mix where there is potential for discovering further unexploited resources alongside the existing mine site.
JORC Resources expected at Clogau
Despite losing field time to the COVID-19 pandemic, Alba said it is in a position to execute one of the most significant underground work programmes seen for several decades at its Clogau gold mine in Wales, just as the commodity is reaching all-time highs in value.
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