Eloise gives up its secrets to AIC Mines

AIC Mines has hailed results coming in from three drilling programs. AIC is developing opportunities around the Eloise mine site, located east of the Landsborough Highway about 60km south-east of Cloncurry. Eloise is producing at an annual rate of about 12,500t of copper and 5000oz of gold in concentrate. Main image: AIC Mines will construct a 3km underground link drive from its Eloise mine decline to access the Jericho copper deposit AIC has advised the ASX that the results cover the Jericho North, Jericho South and Roberts Creek targets. The Jericho copper deposit is located 4km south of the Eloise copper mine and processing plant. Mineralisation at Jericho is now defined over a strike length of 5km. It commences about 50m below surface and extends to a vertical depth of 550m below surface. That was the current limit of drilling, the company said. It occurs predominantly in two parallel lenses – J1 and J2 with higher grade shoots within these lenses, namely Jumbuck, Matilda and Billabong. Related: AIC combs its Eloise hunting grounds for the next big thing The more they drilled at Jericho the more they learned and the bigger it became, AIC managing director Aaron Colleran said. “These recent results have the potential to materially increase the mine life at Jericho and also improve the mining schedule in the early years of the operation,” Mr Colleran said. Highlights include Drilling at the northern limit of the Jericho resource has successfully extended mineralisation 500m north. Significant intercepts include: • JEDD052 – 5.0m (3.5m ETW) grading 3.06 per cent copper and 0.21g/t gold from 434m • JEDD053 – 3.65m (2.6m ETW) grading 1.55 per cent copper and 0.22g/t gold from 258m • JEDD054 – 2.8m (2.0m ETW) grading 2.66 per cent copper and 0.98g/t gold from 131.2m • JEDD055 – 7.0m (4.9m ETW) grading 2.03 per cent copper and 0.51g/t gold from 165m Exploration drilling at the Jericho South targets has also returned positive results. Significant intercepts include: • JEDD049 – 2.4m (1.7m ETW) grading 1.66 per cent copper and 0.23g/t gold from 101.4m • JEDD050 – 1.7m (1.2m ETW) grading 1.96 per cent copper and 0.40g/t gold from 344m • Jericho mineralisation has now been traced over an impressive 5km of strike length. The regional exploration drilling program moved to the Roberts Creek prospect, located 15km west of Eloise. Drilling returned a significant intercept of: • RBDD001 – 3.0m (2.1m ETW) grading 3.07g/t gold and 1.48 per cent copper from 228m Eloise commenced production in 1996 and has since produced approximately 376,000t of copper and 185,000oz of gold. AIC Mines acquired a 100 per cent interest in the mine in November 2021. Current operations consist of an underground mine accessed via decline. The upper levels of the mine (above 1190m below surface) are extracted by longhole open stoping and the lower levels are extracted by sublevel caving and longhole open stoping. Eloise is an owner-miner operation with a mining contractor used for underground development and production drilling. Eloise ore is processed through a conventional processing circuit consisting of three stage crushing, grinding, sulphide flotation and concentrate filtration. Metallurgically the ore is very consistent as the ore mineralogy at Eloise is almost exclusively chalcopyrite. Processing achieves high copper recoveries (generally 94 – 95 per cent) and produces a clean concentrate. The concentrate has significant by-product credits from gold and silver.

Eloise gives up its secrets to AIC Mines

Industry Queensland

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