Castillo proves it can get up to 22pc copper from stockpiles at its Cangai mine

Special report: Early testwork on the stockpiles at Castillo Copper’s Cangai mine in New South Wales has produced high copper recoveries and grades.

Testing on samples taking from the two “McDonough’s” stockpiles have so far confirmed recoveries of over 80 per cent with grades of up to 22 per cent copper and 300 parts per million (ppm) cobalt.

Grades of between 0.5 per cent and 1.5 per cent are considered good and anything above that is considered high-grade.

Castillo is optimistic that further testwork on samples from the McDonough’s stockpile may produce improved recoveries and higher grades.

The company’s priority is to re-open the Cangai mine.

The legacy stockpiles have demonstrated “proof of concept”, chairman Peter Meagher said.

“Pleasingly, we have seen solid copper concentrate recoveries and grades, which we expect to continue improving as metallurgical testwork is progressed.

“Further, we are delighted to have strong interest in our stockpiles from several end user groups.”

Importantly, these results provide a key insight on copper recoveries and grades for the other historic stockpiles at Cangai copper that are still to be analysed.

The project hosts five historic stockpiles of high-grade ore.

Previous results from 10 hand-picked rock specimens from around the “Volkhardts” stockpile returned up to 23.9 per cent copper.

Results for samples collected from an earlier trenching exercise at the “Smelter Creek” stockpile delivered grades of up to 5.58 per cent copper, 3.31 per cent zinc and 1350ppm cobalt.

Castillo has approached the regulator for guidance on how to effectively and efficiently remove the stockpiles from site, so it can take advantage of the economic benefits.

The company says the clear options are third party processing locally or a direct shipping ore (DSO) product once regulatory clearance is secured.

DSO requires only simple crushing before it is exported, which keeps costs low.

This special report is brought to you by Castillo Copper.

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