PNX Metals Ltd (ASX:PNX) has made significant progress in advancing the 100% owned Fountain Head gold and Hayes Creek zinc-silver-gold projects towards development during the year financial year ended June 30, 2021.
In June, PNX released a pre-feasibility study confirming the technical and financial viability of its strategy to sequentially develop these projects in the Pine Creek region of the Northern Territory.
The study envisages initial gold mining and processing at Fountain Head (Years 1 to 5) to be followed by gold-silver-zinc development at Hayes Creek (from Year 4), resulting in a long-life, multi-commodity operation (~10 years) that would produce ~250,500 ounces of gold, 11.4 million ounces of silver, and 116,300 tonnes of zinc.
Staged development approach
Under the proposed staged development approach, Stage 1 would see the construction of a low capital and operating cost carbon-in-leach gold plant at Fountain Head to treat the near-surface oxide and free-milling gold and silver ore from three open-pit mines at Fountain Head, Mt Bonnie and Glencoe over an initial 5-year period.
Subsequent to the treatment of the currently defined oxide gold and silver resources, Stage 2 envisages upgrading the Plant infrastructure to incorporate a sulphide flotation circuit capable of processing the Hayes Creek high-grade gold-silver-zinc massive sulphide ores to produce two valuable product streams, a zinc concentrate, and a precious metals concentrate.
Fountain Head EIS
In May 2021, the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to develop Fountain Head was submitted to the Northern Territory Environmental Protection Authority (NTEPA) and the public consultation period has now concluded.
PNX is now considering the feedback from the public consultation and the NTEPA and will provide an updated EIS to address the issues raised as part of the normal consultation process.
The company anticipates approval of the EIS by early 2022.
Significantly, approval has already been received from the Northern Territory Department of Industry, Tourism and Trade (DITT) for a variation to the company’s Mine Management Plan (MMP) to allow dewatering of the Fountain Head pit as a precursor to development.
Additional targets
In addition to Fountain Head and Hayes Creek, PNX holds a 90% interest in a large and very prospective landholding (in excess of 1,500 square kilometres) in the vicinity of these projects.
In parallel with the studies and permitting activities currently completed during the year, PNX has implemented an exploration strategy that identified a number of promising exploration targets with the potential to deliver a pipeline of gold mineral resources for processing at Fountain Head, with the aim of adding to mine life and enhancing project economics.
Testing these exploration targets has since been deferred as drilling progresses at the newly acquired Glencoe gold deposit (part of the Fountain Head project) where PNX has intersected new extensional zones of gold mineralisation.