www.lydianinternational.co.uk
Lydian International is a mineral exploration and development company with expertise and a proven track record in discovering and developing new gold projects in unfamiliar and frontier settings. The Company is currently focussed on developing its Amulsar gold discovery in southern Armenia. The Amulsar project was a new discovery made by Lydian in 2006 and currently hosts a global resource of 3.2M ounces after its resource update in January 2012. This resource update comprises a total of 1.7 million ounces gold in the indicated category and 0.6 million ounces gold in inferred category (using a 0.4g/t cut-off) from the contiguous Tigranes and Artavasdes areas and 0.5 million ounces gold in the indicated category and 0.4 million ounces inferred category from the Erato prospect which is located approximately 900 meters to the north of Tigranes-Artavasdes. The project remains open in all directions and is currently advancing towards Bankable Feasibility with full production due in the first half of 2014.
Lydian reveals "highly encouraging" results from open pit study at Amulsar
Lydian International Ltd (TSE:LYD) revealed today what it called "highly encouraging" first results from a pit study at its 2.5mln ounze Amulsar gold project.
The firm said findings from the preliminary open pit optimisation study on the current resource in Armenia confirmed "robust economics" and will inform future development of the project.
CSA Global (UK) Ltd completed the open pit study on the Tigranes and Artavasdes areas only - which play host to all the current resources in the indicated category and 0.9mln ounzes of the current resources in the inferred category.
Lydian emphasised that the results were indicative only, as the resources used in the study remained open in all directions and did not include the 0.5mln ounce inferred category from the Erato area.
Two resource input scenarios were used using the updated mineral resources released by Lydian on 5 April this year.
The study stated that the indicated only optimised open pit contained 31.0 mln tonnes of ore at a grade of 0.98 g/t Au (0.98mln ounze) resulting in 0.78 mln ounze of gold recovered to Dore with a 4.6 year life-of-mine.
The indicated plus inferred optimised open pit was put at 53.6 mln tonnes of ore at a grade of 0.94 g/t Au (1.62 mln oz) resulting in 1.3 mln oz gold recovered to Dore with a 6.9 year life-of mine.
The optimisations were based on a gold price of US$ 1,000 oz, a heap leach gold recovery of 80 percent, initial mine ore production of 5 mln tonnes per year with a cash cost of US$370/oz, increasing to 10 mln tonnes per year after year 3 with a cash cost of US$320/oz, said Lydian.
President und CEO Tim Coughlin said the results of the study had been encouraging and said: "The outputs that were generated will help guide our exploration and development program going forward.
"Amulsar is a growing, low cost, economically robust heap leach operation. This year's fully-funded exploration program will include at-least 30,000 meters of combined exploration, step-out and resource conversion drilling.
"Drilling has already commenced on satellite targets located up to 2km away from the current resource shell and by early June a full contingent of four drill rigs will be busy across the entire project. Rigorous geologic modeling conducted earlier this year has better defined representative gold mineralized geometries at Amulsar.
"The new geologic model when coupled with the outputs and implications of this open pit optimisation study means that our exploration team is better positioned to pin point new areas of potential both along strike and at depth where we believe high grade structures further extend."
