Middle Island bumps up gold resource at Sandstone

• Middle Island increases gold resource by 24,200oz
• Further upgrades possible from other satellite open pits
• Here’s everything you need to know about gold

Middle Island (ASX:MDI) has topped up the gold inventory at its Sandstone project in Western Australia by 24,200oz to 692,000oz after defining maiden resources at the new Plum Pudding and Old Town Well satellite open pit deposits.

And there might be further upgrades on the cards given that Plum Pudding and Old Town well are just two of the five new satellite open pits quantified by the company’s 50,000m drilling campaign this year.

Metallurgical testing is currently being conducted at each deposit with the company expecting to achieve similar overall recoveries to the 93 per cent achieved at the nearby Goat Farm and Twin Shaft deposits.

Managing director Rick Yeates said the deposits would now be optimised and mine designs prepared to determine the ore reserves that the two deposits would contribute to the feasibility study.

To the north, Alto Metals (ASX:AME) has achieved gold recoveries averaging 96 per cent from the primary zone at the Lord Nelson prospect at its identically named project.

Previous testing of material from the Lord Nelson oxide and transitional zone mineralisation returned recoveries of about 93 per cent.

The recoveries were achieved using preliminary accelerated cyanide leach testing and are in line with expectations based on historical performance at the Lord Nelson mine, with reported production gold recovery of between 93 per cent and 96 per cent.

Alto plans to kick off an initial 5,000m of a 30,000m program this week to test multiple drill-ready targets for repeat lodes.