Article just out in The Advertiser (News corp: main Adelaide...

Article just out in The Advertiser (News corp: main Adelaide newspaper):

Marmota says its South Australian gold project might be suited to low cost gold extraction techniques

Marmota is optimistic its Aurora Tank project might suit a low-cost gold recovery technique.

Cameron England, Business Editor, The Advertiser

October 10, 2019

Marmota shares have jumped on news the company’s Aurora Tank Gold project could be able to recover gold without using a processing mill.

The Adelaide company, which is famous for its exploration process which measured trace gold elements in tree leaves to determine new exploration targets, said tests showed the ore at the project, in central South Australia, responded well to chemical leaching.

Gold can be extracted from ore via heap leaching, which involves trickling reagents through a heap of ore and dissolving out the desired minerals.

Marmota told the ASX that the trade off is that the process, which is much cheaper as it gets around the need to build a processing mill or contract out ore processing, often results in much lower gold recoveries.

“Marmota is very pleased to announce that the first column leach test, carried out by Bureau Veritas, using diamond core ore sampled from Aurora Tank, has returned excellent gold recoveries of 83 per cent, which is considered very high by industry standards for column leach metallurgy,’’ the company said.

Lab tests of traditional milling techniques showed a recovery rate of more than 90 per cent.

“The amenability of gold recovery at Aurora Tank by heap leaching methods is considered likely to be feasible,’’ the company said.

Marmota chairman Dr Colin Rose said the results were encouraging.

“Marmota has been investigating the optimal path way to production at Aurora Tank,’’ he said.

“The excellent column leach test gold recoveries suggest that Aurora Tank is amenable to low-cost low-capex heap leach techniques.

“A heap leach would mean that Marmota would not need to construct a mill, nor share revenue with external parties for toll treatment in a mill.

“This is a highly desirable outcome for both the company and our shareholders.’’

More work will now be done testing the process using different crush sizes and samples from different parts of the ore body.

Last month Marmota told the ASX it had returned exploration results of up to 120 grams of gold per tonne of ore over an intersection of 1m, just 21m below the surface.

Aurora Tank is located 50km northeast of the Challenger Gold Mine, which has pulled more than one million ounces of gold out of the earth.

Marmota shares were up 16.7 per cent to 3.5c in early trade.