Close To Absolute Conformation Insuficient Liberation of Gold, page-54

Saltiga62

There were modifications made to the plant in the light of the recommendations from SRK and Mining Plus.

The screen aperture sizes were reduced in order to decrease the particle size and increase gold liberation. Pages 3 and 4 of the release on 8/8/17 detail this. There is a particle size distribution graph which shows a marked improvement in particle size. The smaller screen apertures caused the recirculating load to the VSI to increase necessitating a reduction in throughput to 12.5 tonnes per hour. The same release also discusses the performance of the sluice box which was added to the circuit at the suggestion of Mining Plus.

In Table 1 on page 3 of the operations update of 7/12/17, the records for 3.5 months of ore processing are tabled. They indicate a recovery of over 75% for 9,000 tonnes processed which, as I said quite some previously, seems reasonable given the head grade. The throughput however averages over 21 tonnes per hour. So either they learned to run the new plant at the high throughput without significant impact on grind size or they allowed the grind size to increase (using the old screens?) without a marked impact on recovery. The numbers for August, September and October in Table 1 are based on assays so presumably they are reliable.