Red Rock Resources (LON:RRR) gave investors an update on its metallurgical testing for the Macalder gold and silver tailings project in Kenya.
It revealed that Phase 2 testwork has indicated an average recovery of nominally 65 percent gold, and 10-20 percent recovery for silver. The Macalder tailing’s indicated resource currently stands at 1.42 million tons grading 1.64 grams per ton of gold.
It seems the results disappointed investors somewhat. At 13:30 the share had dropped 0.44 pence, about 5.5 percent, to 7.6 pence a share.
On a more positive note Red Rock pointed out that the Phase 2 metallurgical work also showed that the proposed processing flowsheet reduced the amount of grinding and had a reduced leach time compared to Phase 1.
Importantly Red Rock said that the preliminary economics on the project are positive and the flowsheet will be a conventional cyanide agitation leach and Merrill Crowe recovery plant.
The project is located in south west Kenya near the shores of Lake Victoria, at the past-producing Macalder VMS base metal mine.
Red Rock is now planning a third phase of testwork to define the design parameters of the preferred flowsheet and to improve on the resource definition. Also separate baseline and environmental studies are under way.
The aim of the Phase 2 testing, which tried a number of composites, was to investigate metallurgical recoveries from the tailings based on Red Rock’s preferred flowsheet as well as establishing the basic leach parameters.
The company also noted that Phase 2 was carried out on composites made from the differing types of material within the tailing dam, as supplied during Phase 1 testwork with one additional sample which represented material from the tailing dam wall.
Red Rock gave the details of resource distribution through the tailings: “the gold and the silver content is evenly distributed throughout the full size range of all samples indicating that the feed tonnage and grade to the process plant cannot be upgraded by physical sorting.”