Canada Silver Cobalt Works Inc. (TSX-V:CCW) said two tonnes of high-grade mineralized material recovered during voluntary surface site rehabilitation at the past-producing Castle and Beaver Mines will be processed at the company's Temiskaming Testing Labs (TTL) high-grade bulk processing facility in Cobalt, Ontario.
The TTL facility will also process high-grade silver tailings from the mines along with the recovered mineralized material, the company said.
"Having met with South Korean EV (electric vehicle) metal buyers last week and with the TTL bulk processing facility fully commissioned, including the newly installed gravity processing plant, we have begun processing two bulk samples totaling approximately two tonnes mineralized rock recovered from the waste piles and high-grade silver tailings at our Castle and Beaver Mines," the company's CEO Frank J. Basa in a statement.
READ: Canada Silver Cobalt Works says its 100%-owned Temiskaming Testing Labs (TTL) high-grade processing plant is fully operational
"We are doing this to produce a concentrate we can use for further testing of our Re-2Ox process and also to demonstrate the role that the upgraded TTL facility can play in processing high-grade mineralized material from the Cobalt Camp," he added.
At TTL, the waste rock material will first be crushed and ground before being screened at 20 mesh to recover potential native silver for processing into silver dore bars using the facility's bullion furnace. The remaining sulphide material will then pass through the gravity plant to produce a high-grade gravity concentrate, which will be assayed for cobalt, nickel, copper, silver, gold and arsenic, the company said.
Canada Silver Cobalt said it plans to send these high-grade gravity concentrates to SGS Canada's laboratory facility in Lakefield, Ontario where using the company's proprietary Re-2Ox process, they will be converted into battery metals needed in the EV industry
The company regards the proprietary Re-2Ox process as a long-term strategic advantage that will facilitate the production of battery metals for the EV market for many years. It is a closed-loop, zero-discharge hydrometallurgical process with no smelting or burning involved, which can meet stringent Canadian and International environmental standards and traceable verification. It is, additionally, more energy efficient than existing processes that use smelting and could have the potential to be used widely in base metals processing, especially where considerable amounts of arsenic are present.
Canada Silver Cobalt Works recently discovered a major high-grade silver vein system at Castle East located 1.5 kilometres from its 100%-owned, past-producing Castle Mine near Gowganda in the prolific and world-class silver-cobalt mining district of Northern Ontario. The company has completed a 60,000 metres drill program aimed at expanding the size of the deposit with an update to the resource estimate underway.
Contact the author at jon.hopkins@proactiveinvestors.com