REG - Alba Mineral Resrcs. - High-Grade Gold Produced from Clogau Waste Tip

Alba Mineral ResourcesAnnouncement

15/05/2024 07:00

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RNS Number : 5067O  Alba Mineral Resources PLC  15 May 2024

Alba Mineral Resources Plc / EPIC: ALBA / Market: AIM / Sector: Mining

 15 May 2024

Alba Mineral Resources Plc

("Alba" or the "Company") 

 

Clogau Update

High-Grade Gold Produced from Waste Tip

Alba Mineral Resources Plc (AIM: ALBA) is pleased to announce high-grade gold
produced from samples of the fines material taken from the trenching programme
at the historic Waste Tip at the Company's 100% owned Clogau-St David's Gold
Mine in North Wales ("Clogau" or the "Mine").

Key Points

·     To date, Alba has excavated nearly 33 tonnes of <20mm material
(or "fines") from the Waste Tip.  This material will be subjected to primary
processing at the Company's onsite Gravity Processing Plant and then refined
at an offsite gold refinery.

 

·     As a preliminary exercise designed to assess the gold content
within those trenches excavated to date, four concentrates have been produced
from composite samples of <20mm material taken from each trench.

 

·     The concentrates have been sent to an offsite party refining
facility, which has resulted in the following high-grade gold production:

 

-    From the Trench 1 composite sample, 1.1 grams of gold were recovered
from 66.04 kg of sample (dry weight), equating to a back-calculated head grade
of 6.0 g/t or 0.19 troy ounces per tonne (oz/t).

 

-    From the Trench 3 composite sample, 2.9 grams of gold were recovered
from 60.63 kg of sample (dry weight), equating to a back-calculated head grade
of 17.22 g/t or 0.55 oz/t.

 

-    From the Trench 4 composite sample: 1.1 grams of gold were recovered
from 74.26 kg of sample (dry weight), equating to a back-calculated head grade
of 5.33 g/t or 0.17 oz/t.

 

·     Gold production from the refinery has returned significantly higher
grades from the Waste Tip than previous results had indicated, suggesting that
previous laboratory assay results had significantly underrepresented the gold
content of the tip and greatly enhancing the economic viability of mining the
Waste Tip as a whole.

 

 

George Frangeskides, Executive Chairman, commented: "This refinery gold
production, which has returned grades of up to 17 g/t, has vindicated our
decision to undertake another round of trenching over the Waste Tip and our
instinct that the previous laboratory results had underrepresented the gold
content of the tip. Once we have completed the processing of this batch of 33
tonnes of fines from the Waste Tip within our onsite processing plant, we
intend to send the gold concentrates produced for refining in the same way."

Details

From the Company's initial trenching of the Waste Tip, which has produced a
total of 33 tonnes of <20mm fines, four composite samples, each containing
material from a specific trench, were sent to a third-party refining facility,
where the actual gold content of the samples was determined. The results are
shown in Table 1.

The composite samples from trenches 1, 3 and 4 returned a total of 5.1 grams
of gold. The sample from trench 2 did not return any gold content, indicating
that this particular part of the tip is likely to consist of country rock from
the original off-reef development of Tyn y Cornel rather than including waste
rock from on-reef production development.

Table 1: Composite Sample Results

 (figures rounded to two decimal places)

Due to the erratic nature of gold distribution within the Waste Tip, it
appears that laboratory assays have underrepresented the gold content of the
section of tip from which the sample was taken.  This issue is addressed by
the refining of a gold concentrate, as this method extracts the entire gold
content from the concentrate rather than merely sampling it.

By way of illustration, assay results from Pit 2 dug at the Waste Tip in 2022
(reported in the RNS of 21 March 2022) returned a back-calculated head grade
of 0.28 g/t of gold. By comparison, Trench 1, which was dug in the same
location as Pit 2, has returned a back-calculated grade of 6.0 g/t.
Similarly, Pit 3, which was also dug in 2022, returned 0.83 g/t whereas Trench
3, which was dug in the current exercise and is directly along strike of Pit
3, returned 17.22 g/t. In both these cases, therefore, the latest round of
trenching has returned results more than 20 times higher than in 2022.  This
is expected to greatly assist in our determination of the economic viability
of mining the tip as a whole for its gold content.

Figure 1: Comparison between trench results and previous pit results on the
Waste Tip

 

 

This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of the UK
Market Abuse Regulation and the Directors of the Company are responsible for
the release of this announcement.

Forward Looking Statements

This announcement contains forward-looking statements relating to expected or
anticipated future events and anticipated results that are forward-looking in
nature and, as a result, are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, such
as general economic, market and business conditions, competition for qualified
staff, the regulatory process and actions, technical issues, new legislation,
uncertainties resulting from potential delays or changes in plans,
uncertainties resulting from working in a new political jurisdiction,
uncertainties regarding the results of exploration, uncertainties regarding
the timing and granting of prospecting rights, uncertainties regarding the
timing and granting of regulatory and other third party consents and
approvals, uncertainties regarding the Company's or any third party's ability
to execute and implement future plans, and the occurrence of unexpected
events. Actual results achieved may vary from the information provided herein
as a result of numerous known and unknown risks and uncertainties and other
factors.

Competent Person Declaration

The information in this release that relates to Exploration Results has been
reviewed by Mr Mark Austin. Mr Austin is a member of SACNASP (Reg. No.
400235/06), Fellow of The Geological Society and Fellow of the Geological
Society of South Africa. He has a B.Sc. Honours in Geology with 40 years'
experience.

Mark Austin has sufficient experience that is relevant to the style of
mineralisation and type of deposit under consideration and to the activity
being undertaken to qualify as a Competent Person as defined in the 2012
Edition of the 'Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration targets,
Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves', also known as the
JORC Code. The JORC code is a national reporting organisation that is aligned
with CRIRSCO. Mr Austin consents to the inclusion in the announcement of the
matters based on his information in the form and context in which they appear.

 

**ENDS**

For further information, please visit www.albamineralresources.com
(http://www.albamineralresources.com/)  or contact:

 Alba Mineral Resources plc                 +44 20 3950 0725

 George Frangeskides, Executive Chairman
 SPARK Advisory Partners Limited (Nomad)    +44 20 3368 3555

 Andrew Emmott
 CMC Markets plc (Broker)                   +44 20 3003 8632

 Thomas Smith / Douglas Crippen

 

 

 Alba's Projects & Investments
 Projects Operated by Alba          Location   Ownership
 Clogau (gold)                      Wales      100%
 Dolgellau Gold Exploration (gold)  Wales      100%
 Gwynfynydd (gold)                  Wales      100%
 Investments Held by Alba           Location   Ownership
 GreenRoc Mining Plc (mining)       Greenland  37.49%
 Horse Hill (oil)                   England    11.765%

 

 

 

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