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- Red River Resources (RVR) is preparing to restart production at its Hillgrove Gold Project in NSW
- Production will aim to take advantage of the current high gold price with work already beginning on a conceptual flowsheet
- Gravity concentrate testwork indicate a 60-65 per cent gold recovery while flotation testwork indicates an additional 20-25 per cent
- Red River is trading flat and sitting at 11.5 cents apiece
Red River Resources (RVR) is preparing to restart production at its Hillgrove Gold Project in New South Wales.
The Hillgrove Project is located approximately 30 kilometres from Armidale in NSW, with historic mining activity beginning at the site in 1857, ending in 1921 and restarting again in 1969.
Metallurgical testwork carried out by Consep and Core Resources has demonstrated the viability of treating Bakers Creek Waste Dump material through the existing Hillgrove Mill with total gold recovery to saleable gold produced onsite estimated to be between 75-80 per cent.
Red River plans to restart gold production at Hillgrove this year using infrastructure to take advantage of the current high gold price.
Consep tested Bakers Creek Waste Dump samples using its extended gravity recoverable gold (GRG) test procedure and found samples to contain a high GRG content of 81.1 per cent.
The remaining 18.9 per cent of the gold may be considered non-GRG which is infeasible to recovery by gravity methods.
GRG is the portion of gold in an pre that can be feasibly recovered by gravity concentration with the remaining gold, or non-gravity, is the portion which is too fine.
The value is expressed as the percentage of the total gold that is recovered by the standard test.
Modelling of a suitable gravity circuit by Consep indicates that 60-65 per cent of the gold in the Bakers Creek Waste Dump would be recovered by gravity methods to a gravity gold concentrate.
It is estimated that more that 95 per cent of the contained gold in the gravity gold will be recovered by cyanide leaching to gold doré on site.
Core Resources’ flotation testwork on the Bakers Creek Waste Dump samples generated a gold recovery of 83.9 per cent to a flotation gold concentrate.
This concentrate then underwent gold cyanide leaching tests which indicated a gold recovery of 85 per cent.
Work has begun on a conceptual flowsheet and Red River will keep the market updated on progress.
Highly positive metallurgical testwork outcomes from the Bakers Creek Waste Dump enabled the company to focus on a conceptual flowsheet to maximise gold recovery using existing plant and infrastructure on site.
Using existing infrastructure, it will load and truck material from Bakers Creek Waste Dump 4.2 kilometre to the Hillgrove Mine where it will be crushed and ground.
A new gravity gold concentrator will be installed in the grinding circuit to produce a gravity gold concentrate and it’s estimated that approximately 60-65 per cent of gold contained in the field will report to the gravity concentrate.
The remaining material produced will then be treated through the existing flotation circuit to produce a flotation concentrate.
Based on the testwork results, Red River estimates that a further 20-25 per cent of contained gold in the feed material will report to the flotation concentrate.
Total gold recovery to the combined gravity and flotation concentrates is estimated to be between 80-90 per cent.
“These results from Hillgrove show we can restart gold production from existing onsite material,” Managing Director Mel Palancian commented.
“Having only acquired Hillgrove in August 2019, we are pleased that results to date have validated our strategy to expand our operations and we are progressing our plans to restart Hillgrove production before the end of 2020,” he added.
Red River remains flat with shares trading for 11.5 cents apiece at 3:07 pm AEDT.
