Altona Mining adds two years to Little Eva through Turkey Creek
THE DRILL SERGEANT: Altona Mining (ASX: AON) has received results for a pit optimisation study carried out on the newly discovered Turkey Creek deposit at the company’s 100 per cent-owned Cloncurry copper project near Mt Isa in Queensland.
The study has calculated the oxide and sulphide Mineral Resource at Turkey Creek that falls within the optimum pit to be:
17.3 million tonnes at 0.51 per cent copper for 87,000 tonnes of contained copper.
When only the sulphide ore is taken into consideration the Mineral Resource within the pit stands at:
10.6 million tonnes at 0.47 per cent copper for 50,000 tonnes of contained copper.
The company identified these to be potentially mineable resources, although it also indicated they are yet to be classified as Ore Reserves.
Altona has completed metallurgical testwork on the sulphide mineralisation only.
The company added that further metallurgical drilling, definitive testwork, geotechnical and mine designs are required to bring the Mineral Resource to Ore Reserve status.
Altona intends undertaking these studies in coming months.
The company considers the integration of the Turkey Creek deposit into the Little Eva project, which is projected to involve a seven million tonnes per annum processing facility, has the potential to add up to 2.5 years mine life to the current 11 year mine life.
“The study demonstrates that mine life at Little Eva will easily exceed 11 years and that the mining and treatment of the copper oxide mineralisation through the proposed Little Eva plant, even at low recoveries, could add significant value to the project,” Altona Mining managing director Dr Alistair Cowden said in the company’s announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange.
“Numerous deposits in the wider Cloncurry project have oxide caps and Altona will report on all oxide resources in coming months.
“We expect that the proposed $345 million Joint Venture envisaged in the recently announced Framework Agreement with Sichuan Railway Investment Group will consider developing a significant inventory of oxide across the project further enhancing the attractiveness of this major copper development project.”
According to Altona, the Turkey Creek main copper sulphide mineralisation is capped by copper oxide mineralisation from surface to depths of 25 to 45 metres.
The company believes this material may be amenable to treatment through the proposed Little Eva flotation circuit via sulphidisation or via the addition of a leach circuit.
Altona is of the opinion the Turkey Creek study highlights opportunity for an improvement in the project value as additional near-surface copper oxide mineralisation occurs at all the deposits in the project mine plan.
However, this material has not been included in the project’s Definitive Feasibility Study.
In the current plan the material is mined early as pre-strip to access the copper sulphide zones and stockpiled for future treatment.
Turkey Creek is located 1.5 kilometres east of the planned Little Eva open pit mine and processing plant and lies within granted Mining Leases.
Email: altona@altonamining.com
Website: www.altonamining.com