Marmota to process ore at its neighbour’s mine

South Australian exploration company Marmota Limited (ASX:MEU) announced that it has executed a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding with WPG Resources (ASX:WPG) to process ore from its Aurora Tank gold project at WPG’s Challenger processing plant, given that both sites are located close to each other.

The MoU is another avenue, of the different ones being explored by Marmota, to bring Aurora Tank into production. The gold operation is located at the Woomera Prohibited Defence Area, some 500 kilometres north-west of Adelaide.

Through the agreement, both companies plan to investigate what would be the fairest mechanism to start the processing of the ore, whether by toll treatment, joint venture, profit sharing or other arrangements.

Aurora Tank’s first drilling program took place in September 2016 and it reported outstanding 1m intersections (more than 117) including 101 g/t gold (with duplicate samples at 85 g/t and 93 g/t, averaging 93 g/t). Later on, in October of 2017, the company announced that the first metallurgical test work returned 94% to 97% gold recoveries.

Aurora is situated 50 kilometres NE of WPG’s Challenger Gold Mine, which has produced over 1 million ounces of gold. Revenues are around $1.7 billion at current prices.