Craig Brown, Chief Executive Officer commented: “I am pleased to update shareholders with our progress in respect of the Creswick gold project.
ECR Minerals plc (LON: ECR), the precious metals exploration and development company, is pleased to announce a progress update from the testing of reverse circulation (“RC”) drilling sample bags taken from the Creswick gold project (the “Project”) in Victoria, Australia.
As announced on 11 June 2019 and 8 May 2019 ECR are conducting whole of bag testing in order to increase the sample size to gain more representative results than from the original 2 kg assays.
Images of recovered gold referenced in this announcement may be viewed through the following link:
https://www.ecrminerals.com/images/2019/08/22/gec_au_photos.jpg
Craig Brown, Chief Executive Officer commented: “I am pleased to update shareholders with our progress in respect of the Creswick gold project.
Establishing the testing process was technically complex and, with the extremely poor winter weather in Victoria, took us longer than anticipated.
The good news is we are up and running with an established process and test results starting to flow into the company. It is positive to see results so far that overall demonstrate increased gold in the samples. These are the early results however and a significant amount of further information is required before conclusions can be drawn.
The results so far have demonstrated significant variability from the original assays, demonstrating that the small sample size can overstate and understate results. Notably the original 44.63 g/t assay from the 2 kg sample from CSR006 (15-16 m) is increased to 63.03 g/t.
Of particular importance is that we use the data gathered from our work generally, and the test results themselves, to understand the geological structures involved and the distribution of gold mineralisation.
In this regard I would like to welcome Dr Simon Dominy FGS(CGeol) FAusIMM(CPGeo) as a consultant to the Company. Simon has extensive relevant experience evaluating high-nugget effect gold deposits and will help assess our results and guide our future work programmes.
With our testing system now established and running further announcements are expected in the near future.”
HIGHLIGHTS:
Update on Bag Testing and Gold Recovery
- In June 2019 the Company the confirmed it was evaluating methodologies to conduct full-bag testing of RC samples from Creswick;
- Under the guidance of Resource Geologist, Keith Whitehouse, ECR staff and contractors constructed a laboratory for gravity and electrostatic concentration of gold, referred to as GEC;
- GEC uses the dual processes of gravity and chargeability and is capable of removing coarse, fine and ultrafine particles of gold from the RC samples and is similar to commercially available electrostatic drywashers;
- The process of retrieving samples, setting up the lab and processing the samples has been significantly slowed by the winter weather at Creswick, however testing is now moving forward and generating results which we can incorporate into a project model to understand the geology and gold mineralisation at Creswick;
- Samples put through the GEC are logged, dried, sieved, weighed and a shroud is wrapped around the GEC to ensure no fine material is lost. The entire process adds some time to the testing period for each bag, but is essential for reliable data collection. Separate assaying of the processed sample by an independent laboratory takes additional time;
- The process using the GEC separates the sample into four fractions:
- Coarse oversize material (>3mm) is sieved, metal detected and assayed separately
- Concentrate off the GEC is assayed separately
- Tails from the GEC are stored separately. When concentrate or oversize assays are high, the tails are assayed as well.
- (The tails are captured in a bucket below the GEC and because the GEC is a dry process, a considerable amount of dust is generated.)
- Tails Dust: The entire system is enclosed and the tails dust is captured separately and selectively assayed with the remaining tails sample.
- Gold recovered from the process is logged and weighed to contribute to the total gold recovered from each bag tested;
- The GEC has effectively captured small particles of gold as fine as 0.07 mm (refer to image link above);
- The first batches of concentrate and oversize material has been tested at Gekko Laboratories in Ballarat and the tails and tails dust have been subsequently tested with full results available from the first 17 samples (Table 1);
- The results from samples tested so far are from the quartz zones around the higher grade results from CSR006 and CSR012 and a single bag from CSR010. Key findings are:
- The CSR006 sample from 15-16 m has been upgraded from 44.63 g/t to 63.03 g/t (6% of the gold in this sample was in the tails dust and over 50% in the tails overall indicating there is a significant component of very fine gold with the nuggets)
- Upgrades in most bags processed with downgrades in 3 bags (Table 1);
- Microscopic examination of the recovered coarse gold shows gold particles commonly up to 2 mm and this gold is both flat/leafy and ropey (refer to image link above).
- Nuggets recovered by prospecting nearby dumps are a lattice network of ropey gold (refer to image link above) and such a nugget may break down to smaller fragments like those seen in CSR006 following hammering during drilling;
- The testing process remains underway and further results will be provided in due course;
- Fundamentally the Company is seeking to understand the particle size distribution/nugget effect and which geological structures/veins preferably host gold to enable follow on work programmes to be devised with a view to ultimately ascertaining the potential for commercial production.
