Kate Emery, The West Australian January 9, 2012, 6:13 am Assay...

Kate Emery, The West Australian January 9, 2012, 6:13 am



Assay backlogs force juniors to set up labs

Frustration with assay backlogs are driving West Africa's gold juniors to build their own on-site laboratories in a bid to speed up processing times.

WA's Noble Mineral Resources is the latest to do so at its Bibiani project in Ghana and the miner's predictions about time and money to be saved explain why it is not alone.

With the laboratory - owned by Noble but operated by Performance Laboratories - up and running, Noble expects to reduce the time taken to turn around assay results from up to five weeks to as little as 24 hours.

Similarly, it says costs for a single sample could be as little as half the previous cost.

Noble's decision mirrors moves by Burkina Faso explorers Ampella Mining and Gryphon Minerals, among others.

In each case, the aim is the same: speeding up assay results makes it easier to plan drilling programs and quicker to upgrade resources and keep investors happy.

Expectations of consolidation in the region gives companies an added incentive to grow sooner rather than later to avoid becoming an easy target.

Slow turnaround times have made it hard for for explorers in some West African countries to respond to the surge of activity.

Gryphon managing director Steve Parsons said the turnaround for assays had jumped from two weeks to eight.

"There's so much going on there it's just booming," he said, adding that Gryphon was waiting on about 35,000 samples.

As a result, Gryphon is in the process of setting up its own "prep lab", where it can grind and crush samples before sending them to an external laboratory.
However, not everyone is following the trend. Endeavour Mining chief operating officer Mark Connelly said the company had been in Ghana long enough to forge a strong relationship with a laboratory that was meeting its needs.