Batavia solution at Gullewa
Michael Vaughan
Thursday, January 12, 2006
BATAVIA Mining has put a $A13.8 million price tag on the development of its Gullewa copper-gold project in Western Australia and as it moves into a preliminary mining study it believes it has solved the metallurgical puzzle surrounding the oxide portion of the mainstay Deflector deposit.
Metplant Engineering completed a first draft scoping study for Batavia on Gullewa and estimated it would cost $A13.8 million to upgrade the front end of the existing 300,000 tonne per annum CIL plant and install a copper flotation circuit on the back end.
The estimate also included an increase in the size of the 40-man camp already onsite by 48 rooms and upgrading other "selected site infrastructure".
Snowden has begun a preliminary mining study for Batavia which is expected to be completed in March.
Batavia's managing director Greg Durack told MiningNews.net that if all goes well the company could be producing a copper-gold concentrate by early 2007.
The company has also finalised the flotation flow sheet for processing of the oxide, transitional and primary copper-gold ore at Deflector, a process that Durack said had been difficult to crack.
By using a chelating agent on the oxide and transitional material the company has achieved average recoveries of 43.5% copper and 66% gold.
"The objective was to get a saleable copper concentrate recovering the majority of the gold because that's 70% of the (project's) value," Durack said.
"We're going to be losing about 50% copper in the oxide transitional zone, but what this testwork has done is get this project happening.
"We'll be able to mine the oxide transitional material and get some value out of it on our way down to the primary ore which is the main prize."
Average recoveries from the primary ore were more than 90% for copper and about 90% for gold.
Durack said the company plans to stockpile the tailings from the oxide and transitional material separately so it has the option of acid leaching them at the end of the project's life to recover the remaining copper.
Batavia upgraded the resource estimate for Deflector by 140% last week to 2.65 million tonnes at 9.12 grams per tonne gold equivalent for 775,000 ounces.
Durack said around 75% of the resource was primary material, with the remainder being oxide and transitional.
Shares in Batavia closed down 0.5c (6.49%) to 7.2c after touching a 52-week high of 8c earlier in the week.
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