JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The bullion bar to be produced at a new cyanidation plant on South Africa's East Rand would accelerate cash flow and cut costs, gold recoverer and aspirant primary gold producer Goldplat told Mining Weekly Online on Tuesday.

London AIM-quoted gold company Goldplat, which recovers gold in South Africa and Ghana and has the Kilimapesa gold mining project in Kenya, is negotiating to buy a gold mine in South Africa.

Goldplat CEO Demetri Manolis said that construction of the intensive cyanidation plant in Benoni, which would leach gold concentrates and load gold on to carbon for elution, was due to begin imminently.

"We process a large tonnage, we generate a concentrate by gravity, and we take that small amount and we leach it in very high cyanide with other chemicals, and the that solution goes to electrowinning and smelting," Goldplat technical director Dr Bob Smith told Mining Weekly Online.

This would enable the company to sell the bulk of its gold as bullion bar, which is paid for by the Rand Refinery within days, rather than as concentrate, which is paid for in months.

"Concentrates take months to go through the process in the byproducts section at Rand Refinery, whereas bullion takes a few days," Smith added.

Additionally, the anticipated acquisition of a gold asset would enable the company to become a primary producer in South Africa, as it was about to become in Kenya. Additionally, the company's new incinerator in Ghana was producing ash with gold grades of more than 600 g/t gold from low-grade material.

The purchase of an elution plant in Ghana will enable Goldplat to export bullion rather than loaded carbon, again improving cash flow and reducing transport and carbon costs, with regenerated carbon reused in the leach circuit.

The company is also looking to buy a gold mine in Ghana and is at the point of commercial production at Kilimapesa, in southwestern Migori Archaean greenstone belt.

Goldplat, which has been extracting precious metals in South Africa for more than 25 years, obtains its mine waste products from Anglogold Ashanti, Gold Fields, Harmony and Lonmin.

Its stocks of materials for processing have increased to record levels of 53 000 oz gold, equating to four years of current woodchip production, three years of gravity concentration and three years of leach capacity.

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