JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – A Joint Ore Reserves Committee-compliant resource statement has been completed for the tailings storage facility (TSF) at Aim-listed Goldplat’s recovery operations in South Africa, indicating that the TSF contained 81 959 oz of gold, 216 094 oz of silver and 193 276 lb of uranium oxide.
The estimated total gold content calculated by Goldplat Recovery, using production figures over the years, was 87 907 oz of gold, which compared favourably with the resource of 81 959 oz of gold calculated from the drilling programme.
Although the overall grades were lower than expected, Goldplat noted that when the footwall soils were included, tonnages were higher and the overall gold content correlated with that expected from historical slimes deposition records.
“This is a great result for Goldplat – the amount of gold estimated is in the order of what we were hoping for and the silver and uranium is an added bonus.
“This is a resource sitting on our doorstep, which has already been mined and processed and should, therefore, be very cost-effective to process – 82 000 oz of gold on our property with minimal mining costs and relatively simple processing is a great resource to have,” CEO Gerard Kisbey-Green commented.
He added that the company would now optimise the metallurgical extraction of the gold and silver and determine how best to monetise the uranium resource.