Barton Gold Confirms 99.3% Gold Recoveries from Metallurgical Testing of Wudinna Ore

Barton Gold Holdings (ASX: BGD) (OTCQB: BGDFF) has demonstrated recoveries of as high as 99.3% in preliminary metallurgical testing of ore from the Barnes and Baggy Greens deposits at its Wudinna project in South Australia.

Gravity and leaching tests of composites from the Barnes supergene, primary and footwall zones indicated total gold recoveries of 98.8%, 98.1% and 96.9% respectively, while flotation tests recovered 90% of contained gold into concentrates representing 6% of the feed mass with high gold-silver values and low residual copper.

Similar testing of composites from Baggy Green’s supergene and primary zones indicated total gold recoveries of 90.9% for supergene mineralisation and between 97.5% and 99.3% for primary mineralisation.

Leveraging Infrastructure

Barton managing director Alexander Scanlon said Wudinna presented an opportunity to leverage off the Challenger and Tunkillia projects, with strong potential for trucking and blending of high-grade concentrates to Barton’s processing infrastructure including the mothballed Central Gawler Mill, which is the subject of a $26 million re-start program.

“The opportunity to blend high-grade concentrates into future Tunkillia processing infrastructure is very attractive and has the potential to extend the project’s starter pit returns over a longer operating horizon,” he said.

“At current gold prices, such a concentrate would have a contained value of over $4,000 per tonne, meaning it could easily be trucked to a local bulk export facility or to Central Gawler.”

Wudinna sits 400 kilometres southeast of the Challenger underground project (which hosts the Central Gawler Mill) and 200km southeast of Tunkillia where Barton has planned the development of a second mill.

Wudinna Acquisition

Barton acquired the 279,000 ounce Wudinna project from Cobra Resources, and recently added five new tenements as part of the final settlement.

“Wudinna is a highly-valuable addition to our SA gold platform, which now contains over 2 million ounces and is set to grow further with the pending re-estimation of the Challenger underground mine,” Mr Scanlon said at the time.

“With this transaction approved, we will now continue our evaluation of opportunities to integrate Wudinna into our long-term regional development objectives.”