Contained gold at Alt’s Bottle Creek almost doubles in latest resource upgrade

Alt Resources’ (ASX: ARS) Bottle Creek asset is proving a boon for the company with recent drilling leading to a third resource upgrade in less than 12 months and adding 149,000 ounces of gold and 2.88Moz silver.

A third reverse circulation drilling program was undertaken at the project and has boosted the Bottle Creek resource to 5.6 million tonnes at 1.72 grams per tonne gold for 309,000oz.

According to Alt, the discovery cost for Bottle Creek gold averaged $9.80 per oz.

Global resources across Alt’s Mt Ida and Bottle Creek assets now total: 6.8Mt at 1.85g/t gold for 406,000oz.

The project also hosts 3.8Moz of silver.

“Once again, the company has delivered a significant number of resource ounces at Bottle Creek for minimal amount of drilling and capital expense,” Alt chief executive officer James Anderson said.

“The cost-effectiveness of resource drilling at Bottle Creek is evident with this new resource upgrade delivering an additional 149,000oz gold and 2.9Moz silver from only 5,131m of drilling at an overall average cost of $9.80 per resource ounce.”

He added the company now has 316,000oz gold in the measured and indicated resource categories across its Mt Ida and Bottle Creek project areas.

This underpins Alt’s strategy to set up a treatment plant at Bottle Creek to process the gold recovered from Mt Ida and Bottle Creek.

Bottle Creek gold project

In late November 2017, Alt entered into a binding option agreement to purchase the brownfields project Bottle Creek, which is about 80km north-west of Menzies in WA’s Mt Ida gold belt.

A maiden resource was announced in mid-August last year for Bottle Creek for 109,500oz of contained gold and 650,000oz of silver.

This was followed by a resource upgrade a few months later to 2.6Mt at 1.9g/t gold for 160,000oz gold and 900,000oz of contained silver.

During the third drilling campaign, extensions to Emu and Southwark deposits were delineated along with drilling to the north of VB and between VB and the Boags pit.

Rio Tinto’s (ASX: RIO) subsidiary Norgold mined Bottle Creek for 18 months between 1988 and 1989 and produced 93,000oz of gold during that time.

Metallurgy

Metallurgical test work on samples from Bottle Creek’s Emu and Southwark deposits recovered up to 94% gold and 65% silver using conventional cyanide leach processing.

“The project is looking favourable for a simple processing route, and these test results support our aim of developing a gold plant at Bottle Creek,” Mr Anderson said.

All data derived will enable Alt to finalise pit optimisation work, determine optimal plant capacity and provide indicative project economics.