www.lydianinternational.co.uk
Lydian International is a mineral exploration and development company with expertise and a proven track record in discovering and developing new gold projects in unfamiliar and frontier settings. The Company is currently focussed on developing its Amulsar gold discovery in southern Armenia. The Amulsar project was a new discovery made by Lydian in 2006 and currently hosts a global resource of 3.2M ounces after its resource update in January 2012. This resource update comprises a total of 1.7 million ounces gold in the indicated category and 0.6 million ounces gold in inferred category (using a 0.4g/t cut-off) from the contiguous Tigranes and Artavasdes areas and 0.5 million ounces gold in the indicated category and 0.4 million ounces inferred category from the Erato prospect which is located approximately 900 meters to the north of Tigranes-Artavasdes. The project remains open in all directions and is currently advancing towards Bankable Feasibility with full production due in the first half of 2014.
Lydian International reveals further evidence of “extraordinarily good” gold recoveries at Amulsar
Lydian International (TSE:LYD) today announced that metallurgical testing has shown average gold recoveries of 94 per cent from ore taken from the Amulsar project in Armenia.
The company described the metallurgical results as excellent.
On the company’s behalf Wardell-Armstrong International carried out heap leach simulation tests on three master composite samples representing ore from the Tigranes, Artavasdes and Erato deposits. It also carried out four tests on the main rock types at Amulsar
Average gold leach recoveries were 94 and 90 per cent respectively for the master composites and rock types respectively, Lydian said.
It explained that discounting the laboratory column leach recovery for the master composites by 5 per cent would give a predicted full scale gold leach recovery of 89 per cent.
“These metallurgical results are further evidence of extraordinarily good recoveries at Amulsar,” said chief executive Tim Coughlin.
“The results show that there is no significant variability between the different rock types, and that the metallurgical recovery of 85 per cent used in the July 2011 PEA financials would appear to be conservative”.
Lydian said that the main objective of the work was to test the master composites prepared from specific metallurgical drill holes representing each of the main Amulsar deposits. It also explored testing of the main rock to determine if there was any potential metallurgical variability.
The firm has also shipped 10 tonnes of drill core to Kappes-Cassiday & Associates for further metallurgical testwork as part of the Bankable Feasibility Study. This work will be to test representative samples for both spatial and depth variability.
Lydian revealed a number of other key observations from the Wardell-Armstrong work.
It said that the master composites exhibited very fast leach kinetics, with leaching completed after 47 days. Meanwhile the high grade Fault Gouge and Gossan rock type composites exhibited slower leach kinetics, taking 75 and 114 days respectively.
The Amulsar project has a total gold resource of 2.5 million ounces which is open in all directions.
The company plans to mine from one open pit from the Tigranes and Artavasdes areas of the project, as well as a separate open pit for Erato in the north. The costs are expected to be comfortably mid-curve at US$419 an ounce to around US$499 – which means the economics are fairly robust.
The preliminary feasibility study said the company could mine Amulsar for seven years, starting initially at 123,000 ounces a year and ramping up to 256,000.
However that was based on mineable material of around 1.64 million ounces.
The current resource is globally 2.5 million ounces and Lydian hopes to increase that beyond 3 million ounces with the latest drill programme.
