Navigator Resources Limited (ASX: NAV) has established itself as a mid-tier Western Australian gold producer following the commencement of gold production at its flagship 100%-owned Bronzewing operations in April 2010.
Navigator Resources has largest weekly gold shipment at Bronzewing
Navigator Resources (ASX: NAV), an emerging Perth-based gold production company, has updated operations from its Bronzewing and Leonora Gold Projects with the latest Bronzewing gold shipment confirmed at 2,165oz.
Bronzewing is located in the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia, in the highly prospective Yandal Greenstone Belt.
The company has received refinery out-turns for the largest weekly gold shipment to date undertaken at Bronzewing. The seven bars of bullion returned an average gold purity in excess of 93%, resulting in a fine gold return of 2,165oz and revenue of over A$3 million being generated.
The last gold pours for the month, and the June quarter, will take place during the current week and final production figures will be announced when available.
David Hatch, managing director said “the latest out-turns demonstrate that the initiatives being implemented by the Bronzewing site management team relating to plant throughput and recovery are having a positive impact."
"The ramp up in production activities is coming to a successful conclusion with the operation on track to achieve its 100,000oz annual production target heading into the 2010/11 financial year.”
“It is also pleasing to note that recoveries through the processing plant are now running at around 95%, well in excess of the 91% recovery used in the financial banking model.”
In parallel to the ramp up activities, the company is stepping up its focus on extending the current, planned mine life of five years out to at least ten years.
An RC exploration drilling program began yesterday at the Vulcan prospect to test beneath high grade surface rock chip samples and results from the recent soil sampling program at the Eagle prospect are pending.
Navigator also continues to pursue development opportunities at the Leonora Gold Project (located 830km northeast of Perth) by initially carrying out a trial mining program.
Open pit mining for the trial at the Leonora was completed on 11 June 2010. A total of just over 100,000 tonnes of ore was mined from the Bruno and Mert 2 pits.
The original trial plan was for 75,000 tonnes of ore from the two pits however the positive performance of the Bruno supergene ore resulted in the Company taking advantage of the low waste:ore strip ratio and mining the pit to final design depth of 32.5 metres.
As of 30 June 2010, hauling of Bruno supergene ore continues to St Barbara Limited’s (ASX: SBM) Leonora mill.
The third ore parcel (T3), comprising a blend of Bruno supergene and Mert 2 ore, was processed by SBM over four days during the first week of June 2010.
The company has reported that the grade uplift for the Bruno supergene ore demonstrated in the first two parcels has continued.
Given the intelligence gathered from the three processing trials to date, NAV is now assessing development options for the Leonora Gold Project.
One of the scenarios being considered is a 0.5Mtpa low capital, purpose built processing plant to treat only Cardinia supergene material which the company believes to be an attractive economic alternative for LGP development.
Navigator has already received formal expressions of interest from several engineering firms to design and cost the construction of such a facility and will assess this against the 1.0Mtpa business case outlined in the Pre-Feasibility Study.
