JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Explorer Georgian Mining on Thursday reported a 41% tonnage increase in the global in-pit optimised constrained copper/gold sulphide mineral resource for the Kvemo Bolnisi (KB) project, in the Tethyan belt.
The resource was upgraded from 1.2-million tonnes at 1.03% copper to 1.7-million tonnes at 1.05% copper.
The upgrade was based on the recently discovered breccia pipe situated beneath the base of the gold oxide mineralisation at Gold Zone 2 (GZ2), one of three zones currently being developed at KB which may form one large epithermal copper/gold system.
"Together with the initial mineral resource estimate of 2.29-million tonnes at 0.85 g/t gold, including an optimised in-pit mineral resource of 1.14-million tonnes at 1.10 g/t gold, we recently announced for the gold oxide deposit at GZ2, the discovery of the new breccia pipe at GZ2 has pushed us closer to the Phase 2 target of a five-million tonnes optimised in-pit combined gold/copper mineral resource within the KB project area during 2017.
“The copper mineralisation is augmented by a gold 'kicker' that in some cases is as high as 0.5 g/t gold, which will also report to the final copper/gold concentrate as a credit and add significant value,” commented MD Greg Kuenzel.
He added that Georgian had allocated funds to test the depth extension of the two breccia pipes at GZ2 and CZ1.
A three-phase programme is under way to deliver a total resource of more than 50-million tonnes at KB.