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ABM Resources (ASX: ABU) is progressing trial mining operations at its Old Pirate High-Grade Gold Project in the Northern Territory with concurrent excavation of several areas and commissioning of the trial processing plant underway.
Trial mining, which will act as the equivalent of a feasibility study for the project, is designed to pay for itself, making it a low cost entry into mine development and processing.
Mining operations
To date about 3,000 to 4,000 tonnes of high-grade gold bearing material has been extracted and stockpiled with first benches for all trial mining areas – Old Pirate Central, SE Veins and Western Limb – completed.
At Old Pirate Central, mining has extracted high grade gold-bearing veins up to 3 metres wide over a combined 300 metre strike length.
Coarse and fine visible gold were sighted throughout mining of Central Area, with the Heartland Veins containing very coarse gold.
High grade gold bearing veins up to 0.5 metres wide over a 30 metre strike length were mined at SE Veins with fine visible gold sighted throughout.
Coarse and fine visible gold sighted were also sighted throughout mining of Western Limb, with high grade gold-bearing veins up to 0.5 metre wide extracted over 240 metres strike length.
The company is now commencing extraction of gold-bearing vein material from the second benches at the Golden Hind and Old Pirate South.
Pilot Processing Facility Commissioning
ABM has also started commissioning of the Pilot Processing Facility with the generator tested and now operational.
The tailings storage / process water facility is complete and the dam is now filled with about 3.5 million litres of ground water from existing water bores in preparation for processing.
Return water pumps from the dam and water feed have also been installed and tested.
The second-hand, three-stage crushing plant has been tested and is operational while the scrubber / trommel and the coarse gold jig installation and testing are also complete.
The Ball Mill along, with the Knelson Concentrator have been placed and are being tested and commissioned.
Concentrate upgrade tables have been put in place including the secured concentrate upgrade room.
ABM expects to complete commissioning and move into processing shortly. The production rate for trial processing is targeted at 15 tonnes per hour on a day-shift basis.
Coarse visible gold in ore from ABM Resources‘ Old Pirate Central Area
Old Pirate
The Old Pirate Trend consists of a series of gold-bearing quartz veins over a 1.8 kilometre strike length, consisting of three distinct vein clusters of mineralisation named Old Pirate, Old Glory and Golden Hind deposits.
The mineral resource at Old Pirate is 723,800 ounces of gold average grade of 11.96g/t Au.
ABM’s Stage One trial mining is being conducted under the exploration licence and involves the extraction and processing of up to 10,000 tonnes of gold-bearing material.
This will test the system for grade reconciliation, recovery and dilution management.
One of the key advantages is that ABM can open up multiple high-grade mining areas over the nearly 2 kilometres of vein strike length exposed at surface.
ABM anticipates that trial mining and processing will increase geological understanding of the mineralisation controls as well as expose new mineralised zones not previously identified as part of exploration work to date.
Analysis
With ramp up to full scale Old Pirate trial processing to occur soon, Proactive Investors expects further share price appreciation for ABM Resources to $0.041-$0.045 within the next 6 months
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Story by ProactiveInvestors