Sunshine Metals’ Liontown metallurgical testing points to impressive gold and copper recoveries

Sunshine Metals completes metallurgical testwork at Liontown
With further refinement the results will provide valuable input into a planned scoping study
This bodes well for a resource update in December this year

Special report: Preliminary metallurgical testwork at Sunshine Metals’ Liontown project in Queensland has recovered up to 99.4% gold and 95.2% copper on mineralised core from the Gap Zone.

Sunshine Metals’ (ASX:SHN) Liontown asset is part of the broader Ravenswood Consolidated project in a Queensland district that has produced over 20Moz gold and 14Mt of volcanogenic massive sulphide ore containing copper, gold, zinc and lead.

Resource extension drilling has been progressing at the Gap Zone to test for extensions along strike of recent drilling that returned thick, high-grade hits of up to 16.2m at 4.54g/t gold and 1.11% copper from 319m.

Meanwhile at Liontown West, work has been focused on upgrading resources in a gold-copper zone where historical broad-spaced drilling had returned hits such as 5m at 27.9g/t gold and 1.7% copper from 20m and 5.7m at 8g/t gold from 76.3m.

Metallurgical test work results

Preliminary metallurgical test work on samples from the gold-rich Liontown Footwall and the gold-copper rich Gap Zone have now been received.

The intervals selected for test work were considered representative of gold dominant mineralisation and gold-copper rich mineralisation from the broader Liontown Footwall.

Drill assay results for the samples were:

8.1m at 10.56g/t gold, 0.2% copper from 152.2m;
16.2m at 4.54g/t gold, 1.11% copper from 319m; and
16.7m at 3.73g/t gold, 0.53% copper from 229m.

Historical metallurgical samples from Liontown were also gathered primarily from the zinc-rich Main Lode and new Queen Lode.

Gold recoveries to 97.4% were achieved from conventional cyanide leaching while recoveries to 99.4% gold were achieved when the sample was ground to 38µm, as per the toll treating Pajingo Gold Operation ~25km away.

Copper recoveries to 95.2% at a concentrate grade of 13% copper were returned from flotation of the Gap Zone samples.

Rougher tails were treated with conventional leaching and returned gold recoveries to 92.6%.

Resource upgrade in December

“These results are a significant step forward and with further refinement, will provide valuable input into a planned scoping study in 2025,” SHN managing director Dr Damien Keys said.

“The substantially improved recoveries of gold and copper will be applicable to specific zones in the Liontown resource, in particular the gold-rich panel where intersections of 17m at 22.1g/t gold and 20m at 18.2g/t Au were intersected.

“All of this bodes well for a significant resource upgrade in December 2024.”

What’s on the horizon?

Further work is ongoing, incorporating a regrind stage to further liberate the copper and improve overall concentrate copper grades.

Gold recovery to copper concentrate will be reported in the next metallurgical testwork update due in December 2024.

Metallurgical studies will also consider options for optimising gold recoveries from the zinc rich contact mineralisation at Liontown.

SHN says it has a busy period ahead, which include RC drilling results at Highway East and Truncheon, remaining diamond drill results for the Gap Zone and an upcoming Liontown resource upgrade.

This article was developed in collaboration with Sunshine Metals, 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.