Horizon Minerals Limited has announced that trial mining at the company’s 100 per cent owned Boorara Gold Project has been completed safely and six weeks ahead of schedule.
The Boorara Gold Project is located approximately 10 kilometres east of Kalgoorlie-Boulder in the goldfields of Western Australia.
According to Horizon, three trial pits were completed at each of the Regal East, Regal West and Crown Jewel deposits with total volume mined of 513,000 billion cubic metres (BCM).
Mining from the three trial pits was completed in September 2020 with site activities now focused on final mapping of the pits and geological data review for the updated Mineral Resource estimate scheduled for completion in the March Quarter 2021.
Ore mined, including both high and low grade, totalled 267,000 tonnes at a mine claimed grade of 1.23 grams per tonne (g/t) of gold (Au), 25 per cent above the global resource grade of 0.97g/t Au [1].
Haulage of the remaining high-grade stockpiles will continue until December 2021 with an estimated mine claim grade of 1.92g/t Au [1].
Processing of a parcel of low-grade material is also scheduled to test the resource model and grade allocation. The remaining low-grade stockpiles will remain at site for treatment at the proposed Boorara Mill in the future, as announced to the ASX on 10 February 2020.
Horizon also announced today that a second milling campaign was completed at its Lakewood Mill, located 7 kilometres to the east of the mine.
The second milling campaign commenced on 31 August 2020 and ran for 24 days to 23 September 2020 with two ore parcels totalling 46,700 tonnes processed back to back from Regal West and Regal East pits.
The company advised that milling performance has been ‘excellent’ with throughput averaging +90tph, high gravity recovery and an overall calculated gold recovery of 95.11 per cent.
Reconciled mill grade for the upper oxide zones of the Regal West pit were reportedly below expectations at 1.21g/t Au while improved grades were reconciled for the deeper ore zones in the Regal East pit with a mill grade of 1.40g/t Au.
Gold produced from the campaign totalled 1,845 fine ounces with all gold sold at an average price of A$2,654 per ounce generating revenue of A$4.9 million.
A full reconciliation of production and costs is expected to be undertaken on completion of the final milling campaign in January 2021.
The next back to back milling campaign comprising higher grade ore parcels from the Crown Jewel (Figure 1) and Regal West pits is scheduled for commencement on 4 November 2020.
