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DIGGERS & DEALERS

Novo’s belief as strong as ever

by Mark Andrews

n late 2017, GMJ was of material from Purdy’s
Iamong a throng of Reward (JV with Artemis
guests from all over the Resources Ltd), Comet
world invited to see Novo Well, and 47K were being
Resources Corp’s Comet prepared.
Well and Purdy’s Reward Hennigh said samples from
JV projects outside the other projects in the Pilbara,
West Australian regional such as Egina, would also
centre of Karratha. be tested, to increase
The conglomerate type, Novo’s understanding
nuggetty style gold of grades, the extent of
generated curiosity when conglomerate units, ore
first pulled from the ground, sorting recoveries at various
with a growing disparity throughput rates and sizes
between devotees and and operating costs.
those who thought it a “The benefit of having
myth. nuggetty gold is you can do
The groups of “believers” amazing things. Mechanical
Quinton Hennigh
and “disbelievers” still sorting has proven to be
exists, but as Novo a valuable component of
chairman Dr Quinton Hennigh recently explained to Paydirt unlocking this gold mineralisation and making it commercial.
TV, the company is on the cusp of proving the naysayers I rate that [learning] as high as the exploration activities. The
wrong once and for all. sampling we have done now means we have the means to
“We want to take this project forward in a very systematic way process this material very cheaply and efficiently,” Hennigh
into production, pull some of our other projects into production said.
and then show the world that there was a very large gold field “It is a very challenging system, it is quite coarse, quite nuggetty.
here,” Hennigh said. We have been telling the market we are going to do a test mine
“Four months ago, before De Grey [Mining Ltd] made their and stuff like that, now we have a means of processing that
[Hemi] discovery people said that De Grey was a little gold material, so it is big step for us.
find, that it will never amount to enough to find critical mass but “We are going to put these things into production and I think in
guess what? They are hitting it. There is gold in the Pilbara and a year or two people will shake their head in disbelief that this
guess what? We have gold in the Pilbara – hold tight. We will absolute bizarre, what started as conceptual, gold play is now
show the world.” breaking out gold bars.”
Novo is on the critical path to demonstrating the potential to Hennigh’s conviction in the conglomerate-style gold
produce commercial scale gold at the Karratha project (Comet mineralisation in the Pilbara can stack up at a commercial scale
Well and Purdy’s Reward JV) via mechanical ore sorting and is evident after Novo signed a term sheet agreement with Mark
production of a high-grade concentrate to be treated. Creasy and consolidation of a further 2,900sq km in the Pilbara.
Steinert Australia Pty Ltd and TOMRA ore sorting machines Novo now has almost 14,000sq km of ground in the Pilbara
have been trialled successfully, with Hennigh praising both region.
outfits for delivering the goods. Creasy, who helped Novo established a footprint in the Pilbara
However, logistically Steinert could deliver its machine from a decade ago, stands to hold 7.21% of the TSX-V listed entity
Germany to Australia more quickly and has been selected to which was trading at $C3.79/share and market capped at
provide a 1m-wide KSS 100F LIXT fine mechanical sorting unit $C713 million at the end of June.
for use at Purdy’s Reward and Comet Well JV gold projects “He’s trying to get into retirement, not that Mark will ever retire,”
during the 2020 field season. Hennigh joked.
Steinert was expected to take 18 weeks to be deliver the “Novo took on quite a few more of his tenements in the Pilbara,
machine to Australia, as guided by Novo in mid-June. these are tenements that he’s had for some time with various
In the meantime, approvals for field testing of up to 30,000t amounts of work on them. Some of them have noble showings

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