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Horizon Mining completes trial mining at Boorara and second gold toll milling campaign

Published: 13:02 06 Oct 2020 AEDT

Horizon Minerals Ltd - Horizon Mining completes trial mining and second toll milling campaign at Boorara Gold mine in WA’s Goldfields
Mining the good bye cut at Crown Jewel Pit of the Boorara project

Horizon Minerals Ltd (ASX:HRZ) has completed trial mining at Boorara Gold Mine in the Western Australian Goldfields as well as a second toll milling campaign at the Lakewood Mill, around 7 kilometres to the east.

Trial pits were completed at the Regal East, Regal West and Crown Jewel deposits with total material movement of 513,000 BCM and total ore mined of 267,000 tonnes at a mine claimed grade of 1.23 g/t gold for 10,560 ounces mined.

Mining from the three trial pits was completed in September 2020 with site activities now focused on final mapping of the pits and geological data review for the updated mineral resource estimate scheduled for completion in the March quarter of 2021.

Completed ahead of schedule

Managing director Jon Price said: “The site operations team and our local contracting partners have done a fantastic job, completing mining well ahead of schedule with an excellent safety culture and approach to managing operations through the COVID-19 pandemic.

“As we approach the half-way mark of toll milling, the results continue to demonstrate the tonnage and grade uplift potential when compared to the current global resource model and we look forward to the completion of milling and updating the resource model in the March quarter 2021.”

Site closure activities and mine rehabilitation work is now complete with the mining contractor and technical support teams demobilised from site.

Low-grade material processing planned

Total ore mined included high-grade and low-grade while the grade of 1.23 g/t was 25% above the global resource grade of 0.97 g/t.

Haulage of the remaining high-grade stockpiles will continue until December 2021 with an estimated mine claim grade of 1.92 g/t gold.

Processing of a parcel of low-grade material is also scheduled to test the resource model and grade allocation while low-grade stockpiles will remain at site for treatment at the proposed Boorara Mill in the future.

Second milling campaign

The second milling campaign began on August 31 and ran for 24 days to September 23 with two ore parcels totalling 46,700 tonnes processed back-to-back from Regal West and Regal East pits.

Milling performance has been excellent with throughput averaging +90 tonnes per hour, high gravity recovery and an overall calculated gold recovery of 95.11%.

Reconciled mill grade for the upper oxide zones of Regal West pit were below expectations at 1.21 g/t, while improved grades were reconciled for the deeper ore zones in Regal East pit with a mill grade of 1.40 g/t.

Gold produced from the campaign totalled 1,845 fine ounces with all gold sold at an average price of A$2,654 per ounce, generating revenue of A$4.9 million.

A full reconciliation of production and costs will be undertaken on completion of the final milling campaign in January 2021.

The next back-to-back milling campaign comprising higher grade ore parcels from the Crown Jewel and Regal West pits is scheduled to start on November 4, 2020.

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