Patersons likes Batavia
Ben Sharples
Monday, May 29, 2006
COPPER-GOLD hopeful Batavia Mining has extended a diamond drill campaign at its flagship Deflector project in Western Australia following "outstanding" intercepts, while the company has caught the eye of brokerage Patersons.
Ongoing infill and resource extensional drilling has returned hits of 12.13m at 6.7 grams per tonne of gold and 0.5% copper, 0.42m at 102.89gpt and 0.3% copper, 4m at 7.58gpt and 0.4% copper, and 0.38m at 81.5gpt and 0.4% copper.
Batavia said it had initially aimed to complete the entire drill campaign by the end of this month but in light of the significant results received to date, the company has decided to extend the program to the end of June.
The company has also received the thumbs up from brokerage Patersons, which says the move into a conventional gravity-flotation circuit under new management is "appropriate configuration to exploit the ore body".
Patersons said despite a troublesome operating history, it was confident recent developments, including a change in the process flow sheet, the appointment of former Normandy man Greg Durack as managing director, modest pre-production capital and existing site infrastructure, would materially improve the value of the project.
In addition, Patersons said it was confident resource would continue to grow as the drilling moves underground and the brokerage "expected" a positive outcome to the feasibility study, scheduled for completion by August.
The project has a resource of 2.65 million tonnes at 9.12gpt gold equivalent for 775,000 ounces. The deposit remains open at depth.
Pre-production capital has been estimated at $A20 million with Batavia forecasting annual production of 38,000oz of gold-in-concentrate/dore and 2500t of copper-in-concentrate at cash costs of around $400 per ounce, depending on copper credits.
First production has been pegged for around September 2007.
Shares in Batavia hit a 52-week in June of 1.8c before gaining ground to hit a 52-week high of 9.4c in March. The stock remained unchanged during morning trade at 6.2c.
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