Sunshine Metals on gold standard after upgrading Ravenswood resources by 57pc

Sunshine Metals upgrades Ravenswood Consolidated resources by 28% to 904,000oz AuEq
Much of the growth due to successful drilling at Liontown, which has grown by 53% to 4.5Mt at 3.6g/t AuEq
Gold-copper focused metallurgical test work has produced a rich concentrate with high recoveries

Special Report: Successful drilling at Sunshine Metals’ Ravenswood Consolidated project in Queensland has now delivered a 28% increase in tonnes, resulting in AuEq resource of 904,000oz.

Overall tonnage has increased by 42% since acquisition, taking resources at the project up to 6.99Mt grading 4g/t gold equivalent (AuEq) with 42% contained within the higher confidence indicated category that provides sufficient certainty for mine planning.

Sunshine Metals (ASX:SHN) notes that most of the gains can be attributed to a 53% upgrade in resources at the Liontown resource to 4.5Mt at 3.6g/t AuEq following the successful gold-focused drilling there. Contained gold metal is up 57% at Liontown.

Highlighting this, gold now accounts for 36% of the contained metal value at Liontown, higher than the contained zinc at 28%.

This is significant progress given the company only took control of the Greater Liontown project ~15 months ago.

“The Liontown resource is large, shallow and high grade and has driven this substantial resource upgrade,” managing director Dr Damien Keys said.

“We have focused our drilling on Liontown’s copper and gold-rich footwall across 2023 and 2024. Similarly, metallurgical recoveries have been optimised on gold-copper.

“Accordingly, gold now surpasses zinc as the dominant metal in the system and the Liontown resource is now reported in recoverable gold equivalent terms.”

He added that Ravenswood Consolidated now compares favourably to other large-scale producers and pre-producers in northeast Queensland such as Twin Hills (0.99Moz), Pajingo (0.92Moz) and the Ravenswood gold mine (5.92Moz).

Ravenswood Consolidated project. Pic: Sunshine Metals

Metallurgical improvements

With the focus now on gold-copper, further improvements have also been made on previously announced preliminary metallurgical results.

SHN notes the addition of an additional cleaner stage in flotation testing has improved concentrate grades achieved from Gap Zone sample while a selective copper collector proved valuable as a low-mass recovery was obtained.

This has led to an increase in concentrates grades to 23.5% copper and 71.6g/t gold as well as recovery rates to 92.6% and 69.7% respectively.

Rougher flotation tails were then conventionally leached to achieve gold recoveries of 86.1%.

Future activity

The company said that further metallurgical test work will incorporate an extra collector stage which may further increase copper (and possibly gold) recoveries.

On the exploration front, SHN will focus on western extensions to the Liontown mineralisation when drilling returns in 2025.

“The system is practically unexplored to Cougartown and Tigertown (~1.5km west of Liontown) where historic drilling has returned 17m at 3.1g/t Au from 22m,” Keys added.

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.