LEPANTO Consolidated Mining Company on Wednesday said it will start production from its Benguet copper-gold project in the third quarter of 2017.
In an e-mailed statement, Lepanto said on-going drilling revealed previously unrecognized gold-bearing vein systems, comprised of quartz, pyrite and gold (QPG), in five areas of its copper-gold project located next to its Victoria gold project in Mankayan, Benguet.
“The QPG veins will have a very positive impact on future gold production,” the mining firm said.
With this findings, Lepanto said it will commence production from the copper-gold project in the third quarter.
“For this purpose, the copper flotation plant is presently being debugged. Initial combined ore throughput from the Victoria and the Copper-Gold Project is estimated at 1,500 tons per day, ramping up to 3,000 tons per day by 2019,” it added.
Also, Lepanto said “new significant” porphyry copper-gold systems were also discovered during drilling.
“The potential for significant deeper mineralization is indeed exciting and additional drilling is planned to fully test the porphyry style of mineralization,” it said.
Lepanto started exploration in October 2015 and has so far completed 41,000 meters of underground drilling to evaluate the copper-gold project resources at the former enargite mining area.
The firm has discovered combined indicated and inferred resources of 6.67 metric tons (MT) with a copper grade of 0.99 % Cu and gold content of 2.16 gram per ton.
On-going drilling has since identified additional resource of 7.90 MT at 1.69% copper grade and 2.07 grams per ton of gold.
Shares in Lepanto went up 1.56% to close at 19 centavos apiece on Wednesday. — Janina C. Lim
