PERTH (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed Altona Mining has more than doubled the contained copper metal resource and nearly tripled the contained gold at its Bedford deposit, at the Cloncurry copper project, in Queensland.
Altona on Thursday released a new resource estimate for the deposit, estimating it to contain some 4.8-million tonnes of resource, at 0.8% copper and 0.21 g/t gold, for 38 000 t of contained copper and 32 000 oz of contained gold.
This was a 124% increase on the previous estimates for contained copper and a 191% increase for contained gold estimates.
Altona noted that the increase from the 2012 estimates resulted primarily from a better understanding of continuity and geometry. It was also possible to better define the mineralised structures based on the mapping of surface workings and high-resolution copper-in-soil sampling.
The Bedford deposit forms part of the Little Eva mine development and is scheduled to start production in the second year of the mine plan.