The pilot processing plant that London-listed Alba Mines plans to establish at, or close to, its Clogau gold mine, in Wales, will be operational in the fourth quarter, the company reported on Monday.
Alba has ordered a 1.5 t/h concentrator and a 3 t/h impact crusher from mining equipment manufacturer Appropriate Process Technologies, in South Africa.
Alba in July announced that it would, by the fourth quarter, establish a dedicated 400 t/m pilot processing plant for Clogau. The initial bulk sample material would be processed at a third-party mineral processing facility in the UK.
Alba has collected four bulk samples for a total of 12 t of material and said on Monday that it was yet to decide if it would continue bulk sampling this month, or focus solely on further underground drilling.
Drilling contractors MED has completed four drill holes to date and Alba has obtained permission to continue drilling into October. Drilling is currently paused, but the company says it will resume in the first half of October for two to three weeks, targeting the balance of the underground targets that are yet to be drilled. Based on drilling rates to date, Alba expects to have completed around 400 m to 450 m of drilling in total by the end of the underground drilling campaign.
“We are delighted to have secured an extension to our permits meaning we will be able to continue drilling underground into October. That should then enable us to swing directly into the first phase of our surface drilling programme, the notification for which has been submitted to the local planning authority,” said executive chairperson George Frangeskides.
"Our programme of works at Clogau-St David's is multi-faceted, so as well as drilling and bulk sampling we are pushing forward our plans to dewater the Llechfraith mine section, one of our most promising targets, to sample the historical waste tip for gold and to carry out surface trenching and sampling of the first of the many regional gold targets which have been identified by our team."