With the global gold price still running at close to all-time highs, Everest Metals (ASX: EMC) has lodged a mining proposal designed to breathe new life into its historic Mt Dimer Taipan gold-silver open-pit operation, 120km north-east of Southern Cross in Western Australia.
The proposal lodged with the WA Department of Energy, Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety (DEMIRS) follows the company’s initial open-pit optimisation assessment earlier in the year that showed the project’s maiden 722,000-tonne resource could support a small-scale mining operation employing toll treatment of its ore.
Management is planning an infill drilling program to chase up historical high-grade results at the site that saw one intercept running 19m at 3.42 grams per tonne gold from 76m including 4m going 12.95g/t from 76m, among several others.
Everest undertook its inaugural follow-up reverse-circulation (RC) drilling at the project to confirm those intercepts in March 2021 and produced several high-grade intercepts from the first 10 drillholes in a program of 26 holes for 3367m that extended the known mineralisation at relatively shallow depths.
That string of results included a best gold-silver hit in a 1m intercept at 8.15g/t gold and 26.9g/t silver from 84m – with minor lead and zinc – and its longest run of 7m at 3.19g/t gold and 14g/t silver from 106m including 3m going 6.5g/t gold and 25.4g/t silver from 106m.
With an AUD gold price now comfortably above $3500 per ounce, EMC’s Mt Dimer Taipan Gold & Silver Project provides an attractive proposition to mine, particularly in light of nearby processing options which are ore hungry. We have now met a key project milestone in the fast-tracking of the Mt Dimer Taipan project, which has the potential to become a profitable mining operation in Q2 CY 2025.
Everest Metals CEO Simon Phillips
The Mt Dimer mining lease was granted in May 1992 and has been explored by several parties including Placer Exploration between 1988 and 1990. That company developed a resource before selling the project to Taipan Resources.
Taipan partly mined the deposit between 1995 and 1996, excavating the open pit to about the base of oxidation – although the initial model shows the resource as extending at depth and to the north of the current pit. The company’s mining ceased due to various factors, which included a pit wall failure and a slump in gold prices.
Final numbers suggest Taipan mined more than 84,000 tonnes or ore at a grade of about 4.61g/t gold for 5933 ounces.
Subsequently, various small listed and private entities ran small-scale leaching of stockpiles for both gold and silver, with numbers reported by Yilgarn Independent Prospectors indicating a total of about 8000 tonnes was leached at 3.11g/t gold for 800 ounces.
The project was then acquired by Cadre Resources, which put in four exploratory RC holes in 2017, with the object of validating the existing dataset. All of Cadre’s holes intercepted mineralisation exceeding 1g/t gold and successfully confirmed the down-dip extension of mineralisation.
Everest, then known as Twenty Seven Co., acquired the project in 2020 and has undertaken an aerial drone survey over the mining lease area. The survey produced a high-resolution ortho-mosaic image and a digital terrain model over key features of the lease, including the open pit, tailings storage facility (TSF), the leach impoundments ponds and the waste dump.
In 2021, Everest reported its maiden JORC-compliant inferred mineral resource estimate for the project amounting to the 722,000 tonnes at 2.1g/t gold for 48,545 ounces and 3.84g/t silver for 89,011 ounces for mineralisation extending steeply below the current pit floor. The resource remains open to the south and down-dip and has strong potential to extend along strike to the south.
The company’s initial sampling of the TSF in 2020 involved 12 samples and results ranged from 0.13g/t gold up to a best grade of 1.19g/t, with all 12 samples averaging 0.41g/t. Such results justify follow-up detailed auger sampling to gauge the depth of the tailings, average gold grade and to obtain metallurgical test samples to assess potential recoveries and the TSF’s potential to generate additional short-term revenue.
Following its initial open pit optimisation assessment earlier this year, Everest prepared an open-pit mining proposal for Mt Dimer and submitted it to DEMIRS in mid-February. It then received the necessary environmental approvals that provide a clear path to resuming open-pit mining at Mt Dimer Taipan.
Everest’s mining proposal entails cutting back the existing open pit along strike and to the south-east to access and enable extraction of ore both laterally and from the base of the pit. The proposal also contemplates processing of ore at one of several nearby mills in Kalgoorlie.
Everest says only minimal pit stabilisation work will be required due to the shallow weathering profile at the site, which means the pit walls have remained stable since the last mining campaign ceased in 1996. It is also progressing negotiations with nearby mills in the region for the toll processing of its ore.
The company is aiming to kick off mining in the second quarter of next year.
It was back in 2021 that Everest first began to consider the possibility of working up a JORC-compliant resource for its Mt Dimer Taipan ground. Three years down the track, the company sees the stars aligning and is looking at moving the project ahead in an environment of near-record gold prices and where local processing facilities are crying out for feed.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: office@bullsnbears.com.au