Flagship Minerals (ASX:FLG) aims to produce 100,000 ounces of gold per year for more than 10 years at the Pantanillo Gold Project in northern Chile.
This goal will be achieved by defining sufficient mineral resources that will support considerations for Pantanillo’s development, consisting of open pit mining and heap leach processing.
Flagship, which has a market capitalisation of $13.64 million, will focus on conducting the necessary work to convert and increase the existing foreign estimate to a JORC-compliant resource.
This will include validating the existing drillhole data, confirmatory, infill and extensional drilling, as well as other supportive work.
Flagship will also focus on additional metallurgical testwork and other project studies for input into techno-economic evaluation.
Managing Director Paul Lock says Pantanillo provides the company with a material gold inventory and is reasonably advanced with positive metallurgy.
“Flagship is focusing on the oxide mineralisation at Pantanillo as this can position Flagship for a low capex entry into gold production and high margins through low opex,” Lock says.
“Further, what attracts us to oxides and heap leach is the simplicity. Heap leach operations in their simplest form are drill, blast, load and truck operations, thereafter stacking run of mine or crushed material on a leach pad and irrigating with a leach solution to dissolve the gold (or copper).
“At the end of the mine life, the exhausted heap on the leach pad is easy to manage. With oxide leach there is no tailing facilities, and both water and energy consumption is low.”
This news comes after Flagship completed a review of previous metallurgical testwork on the Pantanillo Project, as part of its plans to advance the asset towards production.
Flagship says the review confirms that high gold recoveries were achieved through cyanidation of crushed material. This includes gold recovery of 85.5% from column leach testwork on oxide material and 80% from column leach testwork on oxide composites after 25 days and 83.5% after 188 days.
The company will undertake confirmatory heap leach testwork for input into future financial modelling and to guide ongoing optimisation testwork.
The Pantanillo Project, located in the Maricunga Gold Belt, hosts 47.4 million tonnes @ 0.69 grams per tonne gold for 1.05 million ounces of gold.
Write to Aaliyah Rogan at Mining.com.au
Images: Flagship Minerals
