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QUeensLAnD

Red River eyes gold strategy

Red River plans to fill the Thalanga plant
with ore from the Liontown East discovery

Q ueensland-based producer Red ontown, we quickly knew we were going to start early works, probably next year,”
River Resources Ltd continues to
Palancian said. “Given the drilling re-
to be mining it, so you can’t walk away
get new tunes out of old assets with two from it and test other targets, especially sults, there is a strong rationale for fast-
growth opportunities in its sights for 2020. as it is still open. It then becomes about tracking Liontown’s development as our
Red River has been operating the how you balance that [resource develop- next priority. Prioritising the development
Thalanga base metals complex since ment versus target generation] but it is a of Liontown will allow us to increase pro-
switching the mothballed plant back in good problem to have.” duction of copper and gold at Thalanga.”
December 2017, but the company’s strat- Palancian said there had been a de- The reasons for adding Liontown to the
egy has been about far more than simply liberate effort to focus on Liontown this Thalanga mix are compelling. As well as
returning to historical orebodies. Mining year given the size of the system and the the high-grade nature of the system, it
is currently focused on the recently de- high-grade gold present within it. will also fill a gap in the processing plant.
veloped Far West underground orebody On March 11, the company released “The current plan is for 400,000 tpa
and in March the company produced an an updated resource for Liontown which from the Far West underground, so if
updated resource for its Liontown East resulted in increases in tonnages (36%), we get 300,000 tpa from Liontown, it will
deposit, it’s first self-generated discovery 109% contained copper (109%), con- have a big effect on the cash costs, with-
on the belt. tained zinc (53%), contained lead (34%) out ruining the mine life, because there is
Meanwhile, the company is also plan- and a 125% increase in contained gold. currently excess capacity.”
ning a restart of the Hillgrove gold-anti- The global resource at Liontown and Liontown’s ability to further fill that ex-
mony mine in New South Wales. Liontown East now stands at 4.1mt @ cess capacity could be revealed in com-
Red River managing director Mel 0.6% copper, 1.9% lead, 5.9% zinc, 1.1 ing quarters with Palancian confident ex-
Palancian told Paydirt that despite g/t gold and 29 g/t silver (12.7% zinc ploration success will continue.
Thalanga and Hillgrove’s long histories, equivalent). “It is a 4mt system which is still open.
the company’s strategy expanded far be- “It has always been the largest min- When you look at the history of our drill-
yond reworking old deposits. eralised system on our ground. And, al- ing; very rarely have we drilled a duster
“We spend about $2-4 million a year though the original grade was a bit lower, in the last five years. We’ve got enough
on exploration, but in reality that still isn’t after we discovered Liontown East we ground and believe we have the best part
enough as this belt is still very prospec- discovered more high-grade material, of the belt. We will keep peppering away
tive,” Palancian said. “We have generat- so we took it more seriously. It will result and extending mine life and I’m confident
ed hundreds of targets, but we just can’t in more tonnes and more metal, but we we can keep doing that.
drill them all.” have also identified areas of higher gold “We have an internal process with
The Liontown East discovery highlight- and copper grades, so we do deliberately identifying targets, but it isn’t anything
ed the difficulty Red River faced in cov- chase that.” revolutionary. Seven out of 10 are pro-
ering all targets, according to Palancian. The plan now is to push Liontown to- ducing ore grade intercepts; it doesn’t
“The problem is when we hit something, wards development in 2021. matter why as long as they keep deliver-
we can’t leave it, so we end up spending “This year the focus is really on permit- ing.”
6-12 months drilling it,” he said. “With Li- ting and mining studies and getting ready Delivery is also a keyword at the

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