Classic Minerals gets all-clear on milling efficiency

As Western Australia-focused explorer Classic Minerals (ASX: CLZ) gears up to become a gold producer, its processing plant design has been given the tick of approval by Perth-based metallurgical specialists.

The plant at Classic’s Kat Gap project has been endorsed for efficient gravity gold recovery by Independent Metallurgical Operations (IMO).

IMO’s Grant Harding inspected the plant and, following a comprehensive evaluation of the current circuit design, has confirmed that the Kat Gap processing plant is “fit for purpose,” stated Classic.

After studying Classic’s objective of expediting gold bar production while minimising costs, Mr Grant endorsed the existing milling circuit as an efficient configuration for gravity gold recovery.

Design plans ‘vindicated’

Classic Minerals’ chief executive officer Dean Goodwin said the board’s decision to proceed with the Gekko processing plant and gravity circuit has been vindicated by IMO’s assessment.

“I can feel the plant coming to life very shortly,” he added.

The performance of the pilot plant was consistent with the results of earlier bench scale metallurgical tests which reported 5% mass recovery and gravity gold recoveries between 65% and 75%.

Final hurdle now crossed

This green light is the final stage in Classic Minerals’ plan to be able to treat and process its own ore in its own gold processing plant,” the company said.

Furthermore, the Gekko plant will be able to re-process any gold present in the tailings.

Kat Gap contains a shallow unmined gold deposit located 170km south of Southern Cross, discovered in the 1990s and then the subject of a scoping study in 2003 by the former Sons of Gwalia, once the third largest gold producer in Australia until its collapse in 2004.

Classic has previously described the gold mineralisation there as “impressive with exceptional shallow high-grade gold in its drill holes”.

Its current resource at its overall Forrestania project stands at 8.24 million tonnes at 1.52 grams per tonne gold, for a contained 403,906oz.

At present Classic holds 578 sq km of tenements across two major regional exploration areas in Western Australia.

International Metallurgical Operations was founded by Dave Symons and Steve McGhee who had together studied metallurgy at university in the 1980s.

Their company has, in its 20 years of operation, assisted 500 projects across every continent.