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Crescent Gold Limited is pleased to announce a maiden probable gold reserve of 54,000 ounces near surface at its newly acquired Apollo Deposit in Laverton, Western Australia. Mining operations have been fast tracked and are scheduled to commence in the third quarter of this year.
New drilling results and resource modelling had confirmed the probable gold reserve of 770,000 tonnes and at average grade of 2.2 grams per tonne Au (g/t gold) at the company’s newly acquired Apollo deposit, less than 10 kilometres southwest of Laverton. Crescent Gold acquired the project last year from the former owners, Barrick Gold and Carbon Energy.
All of the reserve at Apollo is located within 75 metres of surface and extractable by open pit mining methods.
Subject to approvals, Crescent is hopeful of commencing mining at the Apollo deposit by September.
The deposit is the most western deposit yet identified for mining by Crescent at Laverton and will supplement the company’s existing gold production from a number of Laverton pits, including Craiggiemore, Mary Mac South and North, Fish, and Pieces of Eight, all located to the east, northeast and southeast of Apollo.
The new reserve milestone is contained in an upgraded JORC-compliant measured, indicated and inferred ounce resource upgrade for Apollo that is 59% higher in ounces than previous. The new resource, also announced today, stands at 2.47 million tonnes for a contained 179,000 ounces at an average grade of 2.2 g/t Au, using a 0.8 g/t cut off.
The new resource estimate compares to the most recent previous resource estimate for Apollo from June last year under the project’s previous ownership of an inferred-only resource of 1.4 million tonnes at 2.4 g/t Au for 109,000 ounces using a 1.0 g/t cut off.
The resource upgrade, including the maiden reserve estimate, follows more than 10,500 metres of Reverse Circulation (RC) drilling and 604 metres of diamond core drilling, undertaken across the acquired western tenements by Crescent, since acquisition, between mid 2010 and the end of the second quarter of this year.
The drilling program encountered a range of high-grade gold intercepts (refer to ASX announcements 26th October 2010, 7th December 2010 and 6th April 2011).
Permitting of the Apollo deposit with WA’s Department of Mines and Petroleum is now underway. Waste characterization studies have been completed, and other studies advanced. Results from a stage of trial mining in 2005, indicate a metallurgical recovery of 94%.
Crescent plans to commence during June reserve definition work on the Eclipse and Calypso deposits, both north of Apollo, and anticipates processing the ore from Apollo at the nearby Granny Smith plant where the company has an ore purchase agreement with Barrick Gold Corporation.
The full announcement can be viewed on Crescent Gold’s website at www.crescentgold.com or at www.sedar.com.
