Artemis Resources (ASX:ARV) is moving ever closer to becoming cash flow positive from its Radio Hill operations as work ramps up across its suite of base metals, cobalt and gold deposits in Western Australia’s Pilbara.
Work on refurbishment and upgrades at Radio Hill processing plant, located 25 km south of Karratha, are progressing as planned, the company said.
Permit amendments have been submitted to the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation (DWER) to add the new gravity gold circuit and operate the plant at 500,000 tonnes per year.
Meantime, 80 RC drill holes have been completed at Radio Hill ore body with best intercepts including 15 metres at 2.05% nickel, 1.94% copper, 0.09% cobalt from 27 metres.
Diamond drilling is ongoing at Radio Hill due to more ore being intersected and a new JORC 2012 compliant Mineral Resource estimate is due next month.
Final open pit designs targeted for the end of May with mining slated to begin in July. The company is also in talks with potential off-take partners for concentrate sales.
“Artemis is working towards getting in to positive cash flow as soon as possible from its Radio Hill Operations and has therefore been very active this quarter increasing the size of its base metals, cobalt and gold deposits in the Karratha region of Western Australia,” Artemis’s Executive Chairman David Lenigas said.
The plant refurbishment and upgrades works are progressing well, and we are busy completing a detailed review of all of our major potential open pit projects, prioritising each project for potential plant feed based on each project’s economic merits.”
Mr Lenigas said Radio Hill plant throughput would begin production on gold ores for the first few months, sourcing plant feed from either 47 Patch conglomerates, Silica Hills, Weerianna and the Tozer’s shear zone hosted gold deposit at Nickol River, to commission the new gold recovery circuit.
Artemis would then move to sulphide base metals feed from either the Radio Hill mine (Ni/Cu/Co) and/or the Whundo Mine (Cu/Zn/Co).
The company’s new Ruth Well (Ni/Cu/Co) and Carlow Castle (Co/Cu/Au) deposits would form the basis of a much longer-term base metals production strategy, Mr Lenigas added.
At Ruth Well nickel deposit, which lies 12m from Radio Hill, 37 RC drill holes and one diamond drill hole has been drilled by Artemis with results pending.
Recent high-powered SAM geophysical surveying has identified multiple “high-order” Galvanic Source Electromagnetic (GSEM) targets within a broader VTEM target area. Drilling will be undertaken as soon as POWs are approved by DMIRS.
At Whundo copper- zinc – cobalt mine, RC and diamond drilling programme has been completed to expand historic mineral resources. A new JORC 2012 compliant mineral resource estimate is targeted for next month.
The company also increased the indicated and inferred mineral resource at its Carlow Castle cobalt-copper-gold project to 2.3 Mt @ 1.3 g/t Au, 0.11% Co, 0.5% Cu & 1.6 g/t Ag within a global resource of 4.5 Mt @ 0.9g/t Au, 0.07% Co, 0.4% Cu & 1.3 g/t Ag.
The deposit remains open and optimisation work confirmed that there is significant scope for expansion with additional drilling. Artemis is continuing RC and diamond drilling with the aim of extending the deposit geometry at Carlow Castle.
Meanwhile, its conglomerate gold joint venture with Novo Resources continues to pay dividends with basal conglomerate bulk sampling from Purdy’s Reward returned gold grades including 87.7g/t, 46.1g/t, 17.7 g/t, 15.7 g/t and 10.6g/t.
Artemis is also progressing with drilling a super-deep diamond drill hole (ASD-1) to +3,300 metres, 50km south of Radio Hill Processing Plant.
The company has identified 6 VTEM clusters of base metals targets with a total of 31 anomalies identified within 25km of ASD-1.
Artemis plans to complete a number of down-hole electro-magnetics (EM) surveys to test for conductors while the hole is being drilled.
Shares in Artemis were at 18.5c, up 0.5c, in Friday morning trade.