Proactiveinvestors Australia

Chaarat Gold Project Overview

The Company plans to develop the Chaarat Gold Project in three stages:

The first stage will process primarily ore which has a low sulphur content which is to be found in the Tulkubash zone. The ore will be mined from an open pit. The processing capacity of this stage will be only 1,000 tpd and the expected annual production is 30,000-40,000 ounces of gold pa.

This first stage will include significant investment in infrastructure such as developing an access road, internal roads, power distribution and power back up systems and permanent camps. 

The company is fully funded for the first stage as described above. 

Whilst bringing the first phase to production and "de-risking" the project, the company expects to complete a feasibility study for the second phase which will see the plant expanding to 2,500 tpd. The mining will be done from underground where grades are higher and the plant will include an oxidation unit to maximize doré production. 

The third phase will double production to 5,000 tpd and enable gold production to rise to 180,000 – 200,000 ounces pa.

The potential exists to increase production further by setting up a larger production facility.

Chaarat Gold Project Exploration

The Company’s exploration programme commenced with regional exploration in 2004 and included mapping and trenching of the known mineralised zones in the central part of the license area. In addition, some of the regional gold occurrences and areas of gold geochemical soil anomalies were mapped.

Following this work the Company applied to the Government to enlarge the license area so as to include the three identified prospects; Chaarat, Kashkasu and Minteke.

Exploration to date however has focused mainly within an area of the southernmost six kilometers of the 12 km Strike of the Chaarat Target. In this area the mineralisation is hosted in zones of up to 25 meters wide. Work to date at Minteke and Kashkasu is rather limited.

Underground development in the form of an adit, drifts and drill chambers in the Contact Zone has allowed the resource to be drill tested to a depth of 520 metres down dip with positive results.

Works include surface and underground drilling in a small section of about 1 km of the Contact Zone, surface drilling in a few areas of the Main zone and drilling and trenching in the Tulkubash zone.

As of the beginning of 2011 the exploration works is focused on bringing the resources to be mined by the company to such level as to allow the issuing of a mining permit and commence production.

The Chaarat Gold Project is currently confined to approximately ten kilometres along strike at the centre of the Sandalash License Area. Access to the Northern part of the Project is restricted by the mountainous terrain, but as road development advances additional targets are being identified which will be drilled.

Chaarat benefits from three parallel mineralized zones; the Contact Zone, the Tulkubash Zone and the Main Zone.

For more detailed information on Exploration of the Chaarat Gold Project click here

Chaarat Gold Project Geology

The Chaarat Gold Project is located at the centre of the Sandalash License Area. The gold mineralisation, typical of the Tien Shan belt, is associated with a series of sericiticaly altered sulfide rich lodes (tabular zones), within a quartzitic and shale rich meta-sedimentary succession. The lodes occur in three mineralised zones; the Main Zone, the Contact Zone and the Tulkubash Zone

The Mineralised System

Mineralisation in Chaarat is “deep epithermal” due the presence of Au, Ag, Sb and As. At the time of formation the depth, based on stratigraphic reconstruction, was in excess of 1,000 metres.

Mineralisation was controlled by the chemical reaction of hydrothermal solutions with wall rocks, as opposed to physical processes of cooling and boiling, dominating “shallow epithermal” systems. The pervasive sericitization, disseminated sulfides and ankeritization within mineralised lodes, and the relative paucity of quartz veinlets (usually less than 5% volume) are taken as indications of the lesser importance of cooling and the importance of reaction of solutions with feldspar rich wall rocks in controllingmineralisation.

Deep epithermal systems are formed in nearly isothermal conditions and are less controlled by near surface sharp temperature gradients which dominate in “shallow epithermal systems” and as a result can extend to great depths. Mineralisation in Chaarat has been demonstrated over a vertical range of close to 800 metres, between elevations of 2800 metres to 2000 metres ASL, and is still open at depth.

The best analogies to the Chaarat ore bodies are the world class Natalka, Maisk and Olimpiada gold deposits in Russia which extend over a vertical range of a few thousand meters. ( A.V. Volkov, 2007, “Model of multilevel structure of ore-columns and conditions of formation of large and superlarge Au-As-Sb disseminated deposits of invisible, refractory gold” Proc. 9th biennial meeting of the Soc. Geol. applied to Mineral deposits, Dublin, pp.573-576). We believe Chaarat has a similar depth potential.

Also noteworthy is the connection between porphyrytic diorite intrusives and mineralisation, manifested locally in mineralisation along intrusive contacts, and in the spatial association between areas with abundant intrusives and mineralisation, evident in the Contact Zone (but not in the Main or Tulkubash zones).

The presence of prograde metamorphic, high temperature calcsilicates (pyroxene-garnet) along the diorite contacts suggests gold is related to late retrograde sericitic alteration, both along intrusive contacts and mostly along high angle fault zones.

The mineralised zones are generally developed sub-parallel to the strike and dip at between 45 and 90 degrees. The gold mineralisation is associated with silver and arsenic mineralisation.

The Three Mineralised Zones

The Project divides into three zones – the Main Zone, Contact Zone and Tulkubash Zone. The Zones may ultimately prove to be connected but currently the Company is treating them as separate mineralised structures within the Chaarat Gold Project

The Main Zone

The Main Zone is a north-east, south-west trending, system of anastomising and braided oblique slip faults steeply dipping to the north-west. Abundant conjugate structures and riedel shear intersections provide favourable areas for mineralization. The Main Zone structure is developed within the siltstones of the Chaarat formation on the lower slopes of the Sandalash River valley and includes several discrete mineralised bodies along the strike.

The Contact Zone

The Contact Zone is a shear system developed between the Main and Tulkubash formations. Mineralisation in this zone has been discovered intermittently over a length of ten kilometres. The Contact Zone structure strikes north-east, south-west and dips at 45° to 60° to the north-west. Three separate project areas occurring along strike have been drilled: C5300, C4600 and C4000 with extensive underground development at C5300. Gold mineralisation is hosted in sheared siltstones which display sericitic alteration with minor quartz veins and calcite-ankerite, and contains some 10 to 15% pyrite, stibnite, tetrahedrite and arsenopyrite, associated with the gold mineralisation.

The Tulkubash Zone

The Tulkubash Zone is hosted in quartzites and the mineralised zones exhibit pervasive silicification and pyritization (quartz-pyrite) with local argillic alteration. Stibnite is usually present in mineralised zones, both as disseminations and in thin veinlets. The Tulkubash Zone strikes parallel to the Contact and Main Zones along most of its strike, but to the south, in the M0700 area, mineralisation also occurs along east-south-east trends where it occurs as steeply dipping en-echelon vein sets and sometimes brecciated zones between north-east, south-west oblique-slip structures, dipping north-west at 40°.

Chaarat Gold Project Metallurgy

Extensive metallurgical testwork has defined that the most effective gold recovery process for Chaarat is whole ore pressure oxidation followed by cyanidation to produce gold and silver doré. Overall gold recovery using this process has been estimated at 92%. Based on these design criteria a conventional crushing, screening and grinding circuit has been designed using three stages of crushing followed by a ball mill. The milled material after treatment for pH adjustment and pre heating is fed into an autoclave where it is heated under pressure in the presence of oxygen to oxidise the sulphidic minerals. The oxidised material is fed into a CIL battery of tanks where it is stripped of gold. Tailings from the CIL circuit will be detoxified prior to disposal in a conventional tailings dam.

The plant will be operated continuously with a planned throughput of 1,850,000t per year. Annual gold production will average approximately 202,000oz with a total of 2.48Moz of gold to be recovered over the life of the mine. Doré produced on site will be sold for further refining.

In order to reduce the technological risk, initially or in general, it is possible to add a flotation circuit and process the flotation concentrate by the same POX method. The gold recovery from the concentrate will improve to 95% but as the gold collection to the concentrate will only be 86%-90%, the overall gold recovery was conservatively estimated to be 82% for this scenario. This alternative was not evaluated at the same level of detail as the whole ore treatment.

Other Licences

Additional exploration has also been undertaken at other properties, although the Company’s current focus is firmly on the Chaarat Project.

For information on Chaarat’s other Exploration projects click here