PFS Drilling Programme Underway At Cuban Gold And Silver Mine
Antilles Gold’s (ASX:AAU) 49% owned Cuban subsidiary, Minera La Victoria SA (MLV), has commenced a 25,000m diamond drilling programme on its La Demajagua gold/silver deposit on the Isle of Youth in SW Cuba.
The programme is being undertaken by Cubanex, an experienced Cuban drilling contractor, co-owned by Canadian drilling company, Heath & Sherwood International.
Over 200 cored holes will be drilled to a depth of up to 230m, in locations nominated by Perth based Cube Consulting after their geological modelling of data from 50,000m of historic drilling.
A second rig will be employed from February 2021 and possibly a third to ensure data for the establishment of JORC Resources and core for metallurgical testwork can be obtained as soon as possible.
Assays and metallurgical testwork will be carried out by SGS in Canada.
The results of the drilling will allow an optimal design to be developed for the planned stage one open pit mine and be incorporated in a Preliminary Feasibility Study (PFS) for the production and sale of 60,000tpa of high-grade refractory concentrate.
Based on the same data, consultants Davey Engineering used grades of 4.5g/t Au, in preparing a PFS in 1995 for an open pit mine at La Demajagua with a seven-year mine life at a mining rate of ~670,000 tpa of ore.
From the historic drilling and results of previous metallurgical testwork, Antilles Gold assumed a significantly reduced gold head grade in preparing a Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) for MLV’s proposed stage one open pit planned to mine 800,000tpa of ore for six years with a 7 to 1 stripping ratio aimed at an annual production of 60,000tpa of arsenopyrite concentrate containing approximately 100,000oz Au equivalent.
It is anticipated that MLV’s PFS will confirm the robust results of Antilles Gold’s PEA for the mine development.
