Cortona signs processing agreement for Dargues Reef

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THE BOURSE WHISPERER: Emerging Australia gold company Cortona Resources has entered into a License Agreement with Westlime.

As a result of the agreement Cortona will operate the London Victoria gold processing plant near Parkes in New South Wales.

The arrangement comes as an ideal solution to the company’s processing conundrum for gold-silver-pyrite concentrate from its Dargues Reef project.

 “We have assessed numerous options and this is an excellent result for Cortona,” Cortona Resources managing director Peter van der Borgh said in an announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange.

“It provides us with security over a facility which we will manage and operate to deliver efficiency and recovery benefits to the bottom line.”

Westlime is the current owner of the London Victoria gold mine, which was originally owned and operated by BHP Billiton.

Currently only the crushing and grinding portion of the plant is used by Westlime in the production of limestone products.

This means the gold leaching and recovery part of the plant is basically unused and sitting idle.

The original operating permit for the processing plant remains valid and Cortona is in the process of finalising the requisite approvals to re-start the facility.

Cortona said it has in-principal support of the consenting authority Parkes Shire Council, subject to the satisfactory completion of the normal regulatory process.

Bench test work carried out by Cortona has repeatedly shown gold recoveries to be in excess of 95%.

Approximately half of that recovery will be done via gravity separation at the Dargues Reef site and the other half to be recovered by further refining concentrate at the London Victoria facility.

The agreement covers the current reserve life for the Dargues Reef gold project, and includes an option to extend as the project grows.

“This agreement resolves one of our last outstanding issues prior to moving to construction, and has the potential to generate cost savings to the business,” van der Borgh said.