Australian miner sees bonanza in Batangas gold digs

Australian firm Red Mountain Mining Ltd. continued to see a bonanza from its ongoing digs at the Lobo prospect in Batangas, with samples yielding as much as 136.9 grams or 4.8 ounces of gold per ton of ore.

In its latest report, the company said, one trench produced samples with 24.9 grams per ton at just 4.9 meters from the surface.

The same trench, called Trench 19, gave samples with 40 grams per ton at just 2.6 meters deep.

A second dig dubbed Trench 21 had samples with 41 grams per ton at less than two meters deep, as well as 125.5 grams per ton very near the surface at half a meter.

“This is yet another exceptionally high grade surface discovery by the Philippines-based exploration team,” Red Mountain managing director Jon Dugdale said. “Drilling has started so there is plenty more news to come as we strive to build a substantial high-grade gold resource.”

Two weeks ago, Red Mountain said recent tests on samples from Lobo showed that on-site processing could yield up to 97 percent of gold from ores.

The company said the “excellent recoveries” were achieved through fine grinding, then standard carbon in leach testing of ores coming from an area dubbed South west Breccia.

The company also reported encouraging findings from tests in other areas of the Batangas project, including those from Trench 7 in Lobo as well as the Kay Tanda areas of a nearby prospect dubbed Archangel.

“We already have substantial outcropping resources from surface, new high-grade discoveries ready to drill and now this excellent metallurgy, demonstrating that very high gold recoveries are achievable through on-site processing,” Dugdale said. “We can now complete our scoping studies, targeting a low cost gold operation.”

The company previously announced drilling results from Lobo, which showed “bonanza-grade” ore samples with as high as 41.5 grams of gold per ton of ore.

In mining parlance, bonanza is usually taken to mean a grade of at least half an ounce—about 14 grams—of gold per ton of material, found at a sizeable volume of mineralization.

In September 2013, Red Mountain started a scoping study at Lobo town to test the viability and high margin potential of the area.

The company believes that the Lobo project can yield 408,000 ounces of gold and 606,000 ounces of silver.

The study was to be based on these estimates, which is also expressed as 5.78 million tons of ore graded at 2.2 grams of gold per ton, and 3.3 grams of silver per ton. Ronnel W. Domingo