ASX-listed gold producer, Horizon Minerals, has continued to ring the till on the back of a 2020 toll milling and trial open-cut mining exercise at its flagship Boorara gold project 10 kilometres east of Kalgoorlie-Boulder. The Perth-based company generated a further $6.1 million in revenue including $3.6 million in net cash flow from the trial campaign’s third instalment of gold production totalling 2,491 ounces and a realised sales price averaging $2,466 an ounce.
Boorara ore toll treated at the Lakewood gold processing plant 7km west of Boorara was sourced from the contract mining of the Crown Jewel, Regal East and Regal West trial open pits completed earlier this year.
In the latest batch of toll ore processing, 50,274 tonnes returned a mill reconciled grade averaging 1.62 grams per tonne gold and an impressive gold recovery rate of 95 per cent. According to Horizon, gold grades improved with depth in line with expectations.
Horizon Minerals Managing Director, Jon Price said: “It is extremely pleasing to see the mill grades increasing with depth and generating cash with the company fully funded to develop our longer-term production plan being assessed as part of the consolidated feasibility study underpinning a stand-alone mill.”
“The trial has provided a greatly improved understanding of the orebody and we see significant potential to grow Boorara along strike to the south and north and test the depth potential below the 180m open-pit limit currently being evaluated as part of the mining optimisation and design studies.”
Horizon says the ultimate objective of the Boorara trial mining and toll milling campaign is to verify the tonnage and grade uplift potential compared with the Boorara global resource model. To that end, a full production and cost reconciliation will be completed after the final milling campaign, which is scheduled to commence around the middle of next month.
The company plans to incorporate all the reconciliation data, pit mapping information and geological intelligence into an updated mineral resource estimate for Boorara that it is aiming to deliver in the March 2021 quarter.
From there Horizon intends calculating maiden ore reserves numbers for Boorara as the platform for the consolidated feasibility study on the potential larger-scale Boorara project development including a stand-alone, new gold treatment plant.
In addition to a proposed mining and processing operation at Boorara, the feasibility study will also weigh up the economic and technical considerations of developing and mining – and then hauling ore from – a handful of satellite deposits within trucking distance of the central production hub. The core satellites include the Binduli/Crake, Teal, Rose Hill, Kalpini and Penny’s Find gold deposits.
However, Boorara continues to be the bedrock resource underpinning Horizon’s Boorara gold production grand plan. Its measured, indicated and inferred resource currently stands at 16.45 million tonnes of ore at an average grade of 0.96 g/t for 507,000 ounces of contained gold.
In the previous two toll milling campaigns stemming from mined Boorara ore this year, Horizon reported revenue of $2.93 million from the production of 1,050 ounces of gold that sold for an average $2,791 an ounce, and $4.89 million in revenue from the production of 1,845 ounces of gold that sold for an average $2,654 an ounce.
Gold production on the two occasions came from respective toll processing totals of 26,340 tonnes of ore averaging a feed grade of 1.32 g/t and 46,700 tonnes of ore at reconciled grades of 1.21 g/t and 1.40 g/t.
The $59 million market-capped aspiring gold developer now has $17 million cash in the bank and $5.3 million in listed investments.
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By Matt Birney
