ASX-listed aspiring gold producer, Horizon Minerals has completed the fourth and final toll milling campaign that treated ore mined from a trial open pit at its flagship Boorara gold project, 10 kilometres east of Kalgoorlie. The Perth-based company eked out a further $2.8 million in revenue including $1.2 million in net cash flow from the fourth instalment’s total production of 1,182 ounces of gold that realised a sales price averaging $2,356 an ounce.
Final trial Boorara open-cut ore processed at the Lakewood plant 7km west of Boorara came via the contract mining of the project’s Regal East open pit. A parcel of low-grade ore to test grade allocations from ore block models was also pushed through the mill.
Horizon says a total of 14,962 tonnes of ore from Regal East returned a mill reconciled grade averaging 1.6 grams per tonne gold and a respectable gold recovery rate of 94.2 per cent, in line with expectations.
According to the company, the low-grade parcel of ore reconciled 6 per cent above the model, with 17,334 dry tonnes being processed at an average mill reconciled grade of 0.9 g/t gold. Recovery for the low-grade material was calculated at 92 per cent.
The fourth toll treatment campaign generated $1.2 million in net cash for Horizon after haulage and toll milling costs.
Horizon Minerals Managing Director, Jon Price said: “The Boorara trial mining and toll milling exercise has provided a greatly improved geological understanding of this complex mineralised system and confirmed the presence of multiple flat lying cross-cutting structures that will now be incorporated into an updated resource model.”
“In addition, testing the ore through a mill gives us real-time metallurgical recoveries, reagent consumptions and optimal plant design parameters and costs as we advance the consolidated feasibility study. Generating cash at the same time is the icing on the cake and we now look forward to releasing the updated resource and reserve in coming months.”
Horizon has been using the Boorara trial mining and toll milling campaign to tease out the tonnage and grade uplift potential compared with the Boorara global resource model.
The company says it intends incorporating all geological and economic reconciliation data and pit mapping information from the trial exercise into an updated mineral resource estimate for Boorara that it is due for release in the June quarter this year.
Horizon then plans to deliver maiden ore reserves numbers for Boorara as the cornerstone of a longer-term production plan being assessed in the consolidated feasibility study on the proposed Boorara project development.
The development Horizon is poring over includes construction of a stand-alone, new gold processing plant at Boorara and the feasibility study is slated for completion in the September quarter this year.
Boorara’s latest published measured, indicated and inferred resource stands at 16.45 million tonnes of ore at an average grade of 0.96 g/t for 507,000 ounces of contained gold.
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By Matt Birney
