Updates on Black Rock, Mount Flora, Horn Island gold and more in this week’s exploration, mining and processing briefs.

Black Rock drilling productivity on upward trend

Contractor Pybar reports month-on-month improvements in drilling productivity at Glencore’s Black Rock project in Mount Isa since it brought in a Sandvik DL432i longhole drill in October.

The fully mechanised electro-hydraulic top hammer longhole drill is designed for large-scale mining.

Pybar said a specialised pump had been installed on the DL432i, allowing AMC (a subsidiary of IMDEX) to add Bore Hole Stabiliser^TM to the water circuit while drilling to improve hole integrity in the soft ground conditions.

This technology combined with Sandvik’s iSOLO drilling control software had been key to Pybar’s production success at Black Rock to date, the contractor said.

Pybar said trials of automated drilling for complete firing patterns would begin shortly at Black Rock to enable drilling to take place during firing and shift change as well as free up the operator to assist with other tasks around the mine.

The transition to further automation has the potential to significantly maximise both productive drilling time and overall performance for the project.

Positive results continue at Mount Chalmers

Drilling at Mount Chalmers has intersected visible chalcopyrite mineralisation outside the established resource envelope.

The new drill holes were designed to grow the resource and provide a better understanding of the geological interpretation of the Mount Chalmers ore body, QMines said

Meanwhile the company says two drill rigs at the project, 17km north-east of Rockhampton, are expected to accelerate the company’s planned 30,000m drill program.

Copper and silver intersections at Mount Flora

Duke Exploration has released the latest results from Phase 2 resource and exploration drilling at Mount Flora, within its Bundarra projecct east of Moranbah.

They include 2m grading at 5.49 per cent copper, 60.15g/t silver and 0.17 gold.

The new results come from outside the area covered by the Inferred resource announced in June and confirm the extension of the Mount Flora and Quarry Lode veins 300m to the north.

Managing director Philip Condon said this increased Duke’s confidence that the resource at Mount Flora would continue to grow.

“We can now start detailed metallurgy test work, with results expected in the next quarter,” he said.

“We continue to accelerate the collection of pluton-scale geochemistry and electrical geophysical data that will be used with computer machine learning systems to prioritise development targets, which we are confident will quickly add to the scale of a potential mining project at Bundarra.”

GBM drilling extends known Glen Eva gold system

A 2500 m diamond drill program has commenced at GBM Resources’ Glen Eva project in the Drummond Basin.

GBM managing director and chief executive officer Peter Rohner said recent work had intersected the Glen Eva vein 400m to the south-east of the old pit, significantly extending the known strike of the vein system.

“Clear vein continuity combined with IP that maps the system along strike for more than 6km underlines the significant potential for discovery along the Glen Eva to Eastern Siliceous trend (GEES),” he said.

“The geophysical signature of this trend is similar to the Vera Nancy trend at Pajingo that hosts approximately 5Moz gold.”

Targets identified along the GEES trend are a key focus of GBM’s Drummond Basin priorities for 2021/22.

Cyclone hails success with Lady Ehleen testwork

Cyclone Metals has reported positive initial results from metallurgical testwork conducted on samples from its Lady
Ethleen copper gold project in north-western Queensland.

It reported copper recoveries up to 92.9 per cent with the use of GlyLeachTM as a lixiviant in the rocess.

Based on the success of these results, stage 2 of the testwork had been approved and was underway, the company said.

The test work involved initial leach tests on three sample types using acid only to simulate conventional leaching methods and provide reference results to enable comparison of subsequent alkaline leaching technology.

The next step would be potential trials based on the use of truck/trailer mounted horizontal reactors based on or near site to demonstrate processing practicality at increased scale.

Horn Island gold hopeful in $1.5m capital raising

Gold and copper explorer Alice Queen has received binding commitments to raise $1.47 million via a private placement.

The company said the funds would be used to finalise the Horn Island scoping study, accelerate exploration activities at Horn Island and provide working capital flexibility.

“As the Horn Island Scoping Study nears completion, we are pleased to have completed a capital raise that will allow us to accelerate further exploration at Horn Island,” Alice Queen managing director Andrew Buxton said.

“With the scoping study on track to be delivered in October 2021, it is exciting to be concurrently recommencing exploration there.”