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Australian exploration company, Musgrave Minerals Limited (ASX: MGV) is known for exploring gold at its Cue Project which is located in the Murchison Province of Western Australia. Along with gold, Musgrave is also exploring copper at the Cue Project via an earn-in and joint venture with Cyprium Metals Limited.
Metallurgical Column Test-Work At Cue Copper Project
Till now, Musgrave’s joint venture partner, Cyprium Metals has made solid progress with regards to copper exploration on Hollandaire and Hollandaire West prospects at the Cue Copper Project. For quite some time, Cyprium has been performing the metallurgical column test-work on the samples of the massive and semi-massive sulphides from both the prospects, in order to determine an optimal copper extraction process for its unique methodology, which has leached copper rapidly into solution.
ALSO READ: Musgrave’s Corporate Ally, Cyprium Realises Impressive Copper Leaching Results
Plating Copper To Produce Final Product Of High Purity Copper Metal Plate
In today’s announcement, Cyprium revealed that it has now processed the primary leach solution (PLS) produced from the metallurgical column test-work in an electrowinning cell to produce cathode copper metal plates which were further stripped from the cathodes to finish the processing cycle through to its final product of high purity copper metal plate (refer below images). This completes the process flow sheet for the extraction method of copper from the Hollandaire mineralisation.
CYM considers this as a very significant milestone in its aspirations to build a project at Cue. As per CYM Executive Director Barry Cahill, the Hollandaire material is very suitable for the company’s methodology as it has outperformed the company’s initial expectations
It is interesting to note that, in a span of six months, Cyprium has completed a full metallurgical processing cycle starting from drilling the mineralisation, to crushing and leaching, and now plating copper as a proof of concept of its low-cost treatment methodology.
Outstanding Copper Leaching Results
A couple of days back, Cyprium had announced the positive copper leaching results from its metallurgical test-work programme on the Hollandaire West material, including:
- Copper extraction of 75.4% on Column C in only 6 days, remarkable leach time to extract the copper metal into solution than Columns A and B.
- Scoping Study gaining momentum, copper resource’s critical mass needed for project development is near to being attained.
Metallurgical Drill Results
Cyprium Metals has been advancing well on the metallurgical diamond drilling programme at the Hollandaire deposit and returned semi-massive to massive sulphide mineralisation. The results from the metallurgical diamond drill holes include:
- 10.4m @ 14.9% Cu in drill hole 19HOMET003 from 84.5m downhole, including 4.5m @ 21.9% Cu from 90.4m;
- 19.1m @ 1.3% Cu in drill hole 19HOMET002 from 85.9m downhole, including 6.4m @ 2.1% Cu from 98.6m;
- 27.9m @ 1.1% Cu in drill hole 19HOMET001 from 45.7m downhole, including 9.0m @ 1.6% Cu from 63.2m.
Forward Plan
CYM intends to take further samples in the next phases of drill programmes, which will be used for further metallurgical test-work to continue the optimisation of its low-cost and efficient treatment method. The company intends to use the data from this initial round of testwork in the Cue Copper Project Scoping Study that it has commenced.
Musgrave’s Recent Update at Cue Gold
While CYM continues to explore copper at Cue Copper Project, Musgrave on the other hand, is also making solid progress with regards to the exploration of gold. Musgrave recently reported high-grade gold results from reverse circulation drilling at the 100% owned Break of Day deposit which confirmed the position of the high-grade link-lode, intersecting 6m @ 51.7g/t Au from 228m down hole(20MORC001). Musgrave is planning an additional follow-up RC and diamond drilling which is expected to commence in April 2020.
Notably, in the past six months, the share price of Musgrave has increased by 11.36%. By the close of market trading on 9 March 2020, MGV stock was trading at a price of $0.091 with a market cap of around $39.76 million.
