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Doug Bright
Resource drilling at Pacgold Limited’s Vertigo pit, part of the company’s South Australian White Dam project, 80km east of Broken Hill, is now 95 per cent complete.
The company says the latest assays have continued to align with, and in places exceed, its 2020 resource block model, with several shallow zones sitting above the main model, hinting at additional tonnes for the next mineral resource estimate.
Standout intercepts from the latest batch included the longest hit of 21m at 1.4g/t grams per tonne (g/t) gold and 0.32 per cent copper from 44m depth, featuring three 2-metre sections ranging from 3 to 4g/t gold and copper in the range of 0.6 to 0.7 per cent.
A second hole delivered 4m at 3g/t gold and 0.11 per cent copper from 33m, with a deeper slice of 12m going 1.1g/t gold and 0.36 per cent copper from 48m in the same hole.
‘The next 8-12 weeks are crucial for the company.’
Pacgold Limited’s managing director Matthew Boyes
A third hole produced 11m at 1.0g/t gold and 0.03 per cent copper from 13m, including 1m at 4.9g/t gold from 24m.
Four other holes featuring strong hits also delivered similar, relatively shallow numbers that would bring a smile to the face of many an open-pit mine scheduler.
Drilling at Vertigo kicked off late November last year and to date, a total of 159 holes have been sunk at Vertigo for 9974m. In parallel with in-pit drilling, Pacgold has also finished its first phase of sonic drilling across the heap leach pad, with assays and metallurgical results to follow.
The company is planning to restart exploration drill work at its nearby Hannaford pit in mid-April before moving the rig into the White Dam North area in June, subject to permitting.
Pacgold Limited’s managing director Matthew Boyes said: “The next 8-12 weeks are crucial for the company as we will have access to freshly re-crushed material and with the plant now fully refurbished, a circuit operating a name plate capacity for the first time since closure of the mine in 2017.”
The company has also ticked off a key milestone at mine site, commissioning its new Metso screen and Nordberg HP300 cone crusher to kick off a re-crush campaign on the top lift of its heap-leach dump.
The company is using its new 350-tonne-per-hour crushing circuit to process the material to a size between 4mm and 6mm. In simple terms, the re-crush aims to recover gold left behind in the coarse, previously leached material, targeting near-term cash flow and faster production.
Management says its crew is in training and targeting the optimal throughput rate by mid-April, to initially leach 50,000-tonne parcels of re-crushed material before stepping up to 100,000-tonne cells later in the year.
With the crusher now humming and fresh re-crushed material set for leaching, White Dam is shaping up as Pacgold’s near-term cash-flow engine – and the next few months should show the market just how hard this plant can run.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: mattbirney@bullsnbears.com.au
