Middle Island Receives Positive Results from Sandstone Stand-Alone Re-Optimisation
THE BOURSE WHISPERER: Middle Island Resources (ASX: MDI) has had an independent re-optimisation completed at the company’s 100 per cent- owned Sandstone gold project in Western Australia.
Middle Island Resources engaged Mining Focus Consultants (MFC) to undertake a series of Whittle Optimisations based on two input parameters being updated from those applied in the previously conducted Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS).
The company said the Whittle re-optimisation has demonstrated that the Sandstone gold plant can be profitably refurbished utilising feed from MDI’s existing Mineral Resources.
Mining Focus Consultants utilised current gold prices and revised pit slope parameters, with around 90 per cent of the optimised JORC 2012 Mineral Resources classified in the higher confidence Indicated category.
In all other respects the inputs to the Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS) were applied.
The re-optimisation study utilised a range of contemporary gold prices of $2,000 per ounce and $2,500 per ounce, consistent with the current gold price of $2,180 per ounce and considerably higher than the base-case gold price of $1,600 per ounce utilised in the PFS.
The Two Mile Hill, Shillington and Wirraminna open pit deposits were included in the re-optimisation.
“Based on the positive result of this re-optimisation study, MDI has commenced an update of the PFS,” Middle Island Resources said in the company’s ASX announcement.
“The update will revisit several key inputs, and expected to be of particular significance, re-evaluation of the geotechnical parameters.
“No additional resource definition drilling is planned at this stage, as over 90 per cent of the Mineral Resource is classified in the Indicated category.”
Middle Island indicated that its drilling database records over 265,000m of historic and contemporary, representing approximately 7,163 drill holes located within the company’s tenure.
This represents an average depth of only 37m per drill hole with all gold discoveries claimed to date based on outcropping mineralisation.
Drill holes deeper than 50m have been focussed mainly on the Two-Mile Hill tonalite deeps deposit, much of which has been completed by Middle Island.
“MDI considers the Sandstone project to have excellent exploration potential, combined with the potential stand-alone gold production operation defined by the recent study,” the company said.
Middle Island went on to explain that as part of the Sandstone acquisition, it has proprietary rights to the original Sandstone database including over 1.07 million meters of drilling in over 25,000 drillholes.
This includes the physical drillcore and metadata covering the entire Sandstone greenstone belt, inclusive of all historical drilling completed within the Alto Metals permits.
Email: info@middleisland.com.au
