Artemis Resources has received all approvals to process the first 4,500 tonne bulk sample of gold bearing conglomerates at its Radio Hill plant site near Karratha in Western Australia.
Final permissions have now been received from WA Department of Water and Environmental Regulation (DWER) and the WA Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety (DMIRS).
The bulk sampling will determine the overall “grams per tonne” of gold from the conglomerate material.
Artemis will use a contract crusher to crush all of the material trucked in from the bulk sampling sites to the Radio Hill mill prior to processing the material through the 80 tonne per hour gravity gold plant.
This permitting has taken some months to put in place, and we are pleased to advise that the Government has now permitted the use of a gravity gold plant at our Radio Hill plant site to process 4,500 tonnes of conglomerate material,” Artemis’s Executive Chairman David Lenigas said.
“Our technical teams are now in the process of prioritising areas for bulk sampling of conglomerates from Artemis’s tenement package.
“Artemis believes that processing large samples of the gold bearing conglomerates is the most reliable method of determining estimated gold grades. This is a priority project for Artemis.”
An independent laboratory will be contracted to manage the bulk sampling programme and will report on recovered grade through the gravity plant, manage the assaying of plant tailings for tailings grade and provide an overall head grade of grams per tonne of gold from the bulk sample material.
Artemis’s technical team are now prioritising target areas within its Karratha tenement package to source which gold bearing conglomerates will be the first material to be subjected to bulk sampling and processing.
Today’s news comes after Artemis recently called on Australia’s peak science body CSIRO to investigate the origin of conglomerate hosted gold in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.
Artemis and Canadian joint venture partner Novo Resources famously kicked off the Pilbara gold nugget rush in July 2017 when they discovered “watermelon-seed” shaped gold nuggets found at or close to surface over extensive strike lengths at the Purdy’s Reward project south of Karratha.
Shares in Artemis were trading 1c higher at 20.5c in late morning trade on Monday.
