Joint Venture to enable processing of Company’s as well as third party material
Great Western Mining Corporation PLC is pleased to announce that it has signed a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding to create a Joint Venture (“JV”) with an experienced Nevada mining contractor, for processing gold and silver from waste material on its mineral concessions in Nevada.
Great Western and its proposed partner are currently negotiating a fully-termed operating agreement which will follow a standard industry format used in Nevada.
The JV will process material using both gravity separation and a contained flotation system, full details of which will be announced upon signing of the formal agreement.
The JV has now:
· Secured the use of a suitable mill site on private land
· Determined an initial design for a (1) gravity separation plant and a (2) flotation plant
· Identified and secured the equipment required
The Company has allocated up to $100,000 to the JV to facilitate the detailed planning stage and submission to the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection.
The equipment identified by the JV will in most cases be pre-used mine equipment sourced locally, refurbishment cost of which is expected to be significantly less than the cost of new equipment, providing for economical start-up costs and a faster lead-time to commissioning.
The JV will initially process material from the Company’s Mineral Jackpot and Olympic Gold properties. The JV will also process material owned by the JV partner and the partners will together source additional material from third parties for processing on a commercial basis.
At Mineral Jackpot, Great Western has over 50 spoil heaps left from five adjacent and connected historical mines which produced gold and silver in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. The recently upgraded 14 km road to the site will enable a 20-ton dumper truck to load spoil material from this mountainous area.
At Olympic Gold, three sources of waste material have been identified and are being extensively tested for reprocessing, close to the high-yielding OMCO gold mine where operations ceased during the Second World War:
· Tailings, to be processed through the contained flotation circuit
· A stockpile of mined material never previously processed
· Substantial spoil heaps
The plant will be located at a site which has previously been used for mineral processing operations and is approximately equidistant to Mineral Jackpot and Olympic Gold, on a major highway providing easy vehicle access.
Great Western Chairman Brian Hall commented: “At the end of 2020 we successfully produced a doré bar of gold and silver from spoil material at our Mineral Jackpot claims and established the potential for processing such material on a commercial scale. An initial low level gravity separation project was evaluated but this has since expanded as other material has been identified on our concessions, including significant tailings at the Olympic Gold Project. The ingredients are now in place to create a commercial plant to handle such material from all our concessions, where available, as well as processing material for third parties on a commercial basis. This opens a new chapter in Great Western’s story which will run in parallel with our efforts to explore for and identify significant reserves of precious metals and copper, aiming to achieve an order of magnitude increase in value for shareholders. We will provide more information on the joint venture, the plant and the detailed research we have carried out on the resources available to us as soon as we are in a position to do so.”
For further information:
Great Western Mining Corporation PLC
Brian Hall, Chairman
+44 207 933 8780
Max Williams, Finance Director
+44 207 933 8780
