Gryphon Minerals (ASX: GRY) substantial shareholder Van Eck Associates Corporation has taken up a further interest in the company, as it progresses the development of the Banfora Gold Project in Burkina Faso.
Van Eck, a highly-regarded U.S. fund manager, increased its shareholding in Gryphon to 9.93% after acquiring a further 3.5 million shares.
The fund manager has taken advantage of lower stock prices from the recent pull-back in equities prices to investor further funds in Gryphon.
Gryphon’s main focus is the completion of the Definitive Feasibility Study, which is due for completion later this year, and the development and construction of the Banfora project.
Banfora has a JORC Resource of 56.4 million tonnes at 2 grams per tonne (g/t) gold for a 3.6 million ounces of contained gold, with 2.2 million ounces of that in the higher confidence Measured and Indicated categories, identified at the Nogbele, Fourkoura, Samavogo and Stinger gold deposits.
Importantly, the potential is still high to continue building on this Resource base with mineralisation open along strike and at depth at each of these deposits.
The remainder of the total Resource comes from the additional heap leach potential material at the Nogbele gold deposit, which hosts the extra 49.2 million tonnes at 0.6g/t for 0.93 million ounces of contained gold in the Inferred category.
Preliminary results of above 90% average gold recoveries from recent column leach test work on bulk trench samples across three portions of the Nogbele gold deposit, targeting lower gold grade halo mineralisation, indicate a real potential for successful heap leach gold recovery.
Results of the heap leach studies are expected at the end of 2012, separate to the current Definitive Feasibility Studies
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