Detailed drilling at its Metates project in northwestern Durango state, Mexico, has enabled Cambior (TSE) to double the gold deposit’s mineral inventory.
The company will now turn its attention to the problem of extracting gold from the refractory mineralization.
The drilling, carried out over a 100-metre grid plan, indicates 430 million tonnes grading 0.75 gram gold and 18.6 grams silver per tonne, based on a cutoff of 0.7 gram gold. The host rocks are folded sediments intruded by igneous sills. In both rock types, disseminations and veinlets of pyrite, sphalerite, galena and other sulphides contain microscopic gold inclusions.
Cambior has spent US$9.4 million on the project so far, and budgeted US$2.2 million for the remainder of 1995. Much of that budget will go into metallurgical testing on the sulphides to determine the economical means of winning the gold and silver. Cambior plans to look at bio-oxidation, pressure oxidation and roasting of sulphide concentrates, as well as chemical metallurgy to oxidize sulphides.
The project consists of five concessions (four for exploitation and one for exploration), covering a total area of 47 sq. km. Owner Industrias Luismin has granted an option under which Cambior can earn a half interest by spending US$9 million and producing a feasibility study by April, 1997, or by spending US$15 million and producing a study by April, 1998.
Be the first to comment on "Cambior boosts reserves at Metates deposit"