Feb 12 2020
Monument Mining Limited, an established Canadian gold producer, is happy to announce that a trial mining program has been initiated at Peranggih Gold Prospect located in Peninsular Malaysia, Pahang State, on January 20th, 2020.
Peranggih-Massive quartz breccia with quartz veins. Image Credit: Monument Mining Limited.
The existing Selinsing oxide gold processing plant will be fed with the bulk sample material to measure the presence of coarse gold to validate the average grade of the close-spaced drilled region, and to test the plant-scale metallurgical performance.
The trial mining program, which was initially scheduled to begin in October 2019, was postponed owing to the monsoon season. This period brought more torrential rainfall than expected and considerably impacted the earthwork as well as road construction activities.
A bulk sample of 11,428 tons has been planned to be extracted and delivered to the Selinsing run-of-mine pad. The aim was to feed the mill in one campaign at 1,024 average tons/ day production rate. This operation is scheduled to be completed by early March 2020.
Moreover, the initial two-week mining operation has yielded a total of 14,342 tons of material, including 8,784 tons of waste and 5,558 tons of bulk sample material.
During the trial mining period, bench mapping was carried out to get a more in-depth insight into the geology of Peranggih. Based on the data obtained to date, quartz breccia was identified as bands (a thickness of 10 cm–30 cm) inside the predominantly tuff country rock and connected with both high-grade and low-grade ore blocks.
Bulk quartz breccia was detected inside the excavation region in numerous sites. Moreover, visible gold has been identified in the brecciated quartz material. At times, quartz vein material was detected in the quartz breccia but was almost always brecciated.
The Peranggih haulage road has been completed, which is open for trucking activities, and now the trial mining program is being performed.
Major construction work was also carried out on the Peranggih haulage road. As part of this work, 14 new culvert crossings were installed along the 10 km length from Selinsing Northern tenement border to the south of Peranggih tenement and cut and fill activities that were performed from the Sungai Durian until Sungai Kura tributaries for an overall length of 2 km. This was done to make sure that materials are efficiently transported from the Peranggih project to the Selinsing plant site.
To offer protection and mitigation in an emergency, the safety bund was built along the haulage road. More enhancements to the surface of the road will be made so that the road can be accessed during all weather conditions in the days to come.
At Peranggih’s trial mining site, preparation work included starter pit outline, demarcation of tenement boundaries, construction of a siltation pond, and labeling the bulk sample blocks on the region that was earlier drilled for grade control.
The drill program performed at Peranggih in 2017 and 2018 effectively outlined a massive 15 m-20 m wide high-grade zone and numerous isolated high-grade zones, enclosed by a halo of lower-grade gold mineralization.
The drill program demonstrated the existence of disseminated gold in the breccia matrix. A preliminary metallurgical analysis was performed on the Peranggih Oxide ore 2014 DD core samples, revealing an average recovery of the oxide material by cyanide leaching that surpassed 80% with a maximum recovery of up to 98%.
So far, less than 10% of the overall mineralization strike structure length was drilled at the Peranggih tenement, and the gold mineralization remains exposed along strike and down-dip. Moreover, the extensive nature of the brecciation events signifies prospectivity for a significant gold discovery inside the Peranggih goldfield.
Further exploration drilling can close the information gaps on the predicted mineralization, apart from grade control drilling, which is likely to be expanded at Peranggih North or to analyze other kinds of targets.
Opportunities are expected to extend and further define a mineral resource and enhance grade in the richest, brecciated central zone. This zone also lies in between the historically drilled and modeled domains.
Based on the trial mining program results, a follow-up exploration program can be developed to test neighboring regions (for example, the North Pond), and also regions that have similar occurrences of brecciated material indie the district.