Red River Resources Limited has poured first gold at its Hillgrove Gold Mine which is positioned roughly 30 kilometres from Armidale in NSW. This achievement marks an important step forward in Red River’s strategy of building a multi-asset operating business focused on base and precious metals.
On Monday the company announced that it has completed the commissioning of the Hillgrove gold plant and poured its first bar of gold in more than 20 years.
The first bar poured weighed 0.97 kilograms and graded 83 per cent gold and 13 per cent silver.
Red River Resources’ Managing Director, Mel Palancian, thanked all the employees, consultants and contractors who contributed to the achievement.
“The start of gold production at Hillgrove represents a material step in our strategy to build a multi-asset operating business focused on base and precious metals,” Mr Palancian said.
“Red River completed the Hillgrove Gold Mine acquisition in August 2019 for A$4 million in RVR shares, and we decided that the best way to bring this project back into production was through treating material from the Bakers Creek stockpile before resuming underground operations, with methodical permitting, refurbishment and upgrade activities to execute our strategy,” he shared.
Red River has installed a Consep Acacia Leach Reactor at Hillgrove to maximise recovery of gold from the Knelson gravity gold concentrate. The plant comprises an up-flow fluidised reactor for the leaching process, which has been developed and optimised to produce the ideal solid-liquid interaction for maximised gold leaching reaction kinetics without mechanical agitation.
Red River advises that mining and processing activities continue to ramp up at Hillgrove. To date, approximately 18,000 tonnes of Bakers Creek Stockpile has been mined and processed through the Hillgrove Plant. Currently, there are an estimated 800 – 1,000 ounces of gold in the circuit.
Mr Palancian adds: “I look forward to updating the market as we increase gold production from the Bakers Creek Stockpile in Stage 1 before we move to the full restart of UG production in Stage 2, producing gold, gold concentrate and goldantimony concentrate.”
