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Musgrave secures mining leases for Big Sky, White Heat-Mosaic deposits and proves high gold recovery potential
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The final pieces of the puzzle are starting to fall into place as Musgrave heads down the final stretch towards delivery of its much-anticipated stage one prefeasibility study (PFS) for the Cue gold project in WA’s mineral-rich Murchison district.
Musgrave Minerals’ (ASX:MGV) has been granted mining leases for the Big Sky and White Heat-Mosaic deposits, and at the same time proven both deposits can deliver high gold recoveries.
Metallurgical testwork showed Musgrave could generate 93-99% recoverable gold from very fast conventional gravity and cyanide leach tests undertaken on the oxide and fresh ore samples taken from the two deposits.
It also showed very positive gravity only recoveries of >36% for Big Sky ore and >76% for the White Heat-Mosaic ore.
Importantly, the results show consistent amenability to conventional gravity and leaching techniques using standard reagents across all the individual deposits at the Cue project.
Managing director Rob Waugh said the outcome was another set of strong, consistent metallurgical results demonstrating there was a general uniformity and consistency with the recoveries across all of Musgrave’s gold deposits at Cue.
“The very high total gold recovery and high gravity-only component recovery ensures that conventional processing options can be applied in any development scenario moving forward and will strongly inform the stage one PFS, which is due for completion late in the first quarter CY2023.”
“The metallurgical recoveries are consistent with those previously observed from the Break of Day and Lena deposits.”
Making significant advances
Waugh said the granted mining leases now fully encapsulated all of Musgrave’s gold resources in the area and covered the broader development envelope.
“This is another significant positive step forward for the project,” he said.
The White Heat-Mosaic deposit hosts resources of 185,000 tonnes at 11 grams per tonne (g/t) for 65,000oz of contained gold, which is a subset of the resource inventory along the high-grade Break of Day Trend – one of the highest-grade undeveloped open-cut gold resources in Australia with 982,000 tonnes at 10.4g/t for 327,000oz of contained gold.
The Big Sky deposit, meanwhile, hosts 4.65 million tonnes at 1.2g/t for 173,000oz of contained gold, which is a subset of the resource inventory along the Western Trend that houses a resource of 9.8 million tonnes at 1.7g/t for 541,000oz of contained gold.
The news comes just after Musgrave raised $8m via a strongly supported placement to institutional and sophisticated investors.
The company is also aiming to raise a further $2m via a share purchase plan, which if fully subscribed will boost Musgrave’s cash reserves to approximately $15m.
Cue currently has a resource inventory of 12.3 million tonnes at 2.3 grams per tonne (g/t) for 927,000oz of contained gold.
Musgrave is gearing up to deliver the results of the stage one pre-feasibility study in the first quarter of 2023, focusing on the technical and financial viability of the early years of the Cue Gold Project.
The company is also continuing exploration and resource conversion drilling with the aim of extending the mine life beyond stage one.
This article was developed in collaboration with Musgrave Minerals, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.
This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.
