The Koryx Copper team at the Haib project is reviewing historical technical studies to assess the potential viability of a conventional milling & flotation circuit.
Haib is a large and advanced copper/molybdenum porphyry deposit in southern Namibia with multiple operators’ histories of exploration and project development.
The team wants to compare the currently envisaged flotation of fine material with bacterial leaching of the coarse material.
This week, Koryx Copper intersected 72 meters at 0.38% and 80 meters at 0.34% copper equivalent, extending the mineralisation limits at the Haib Copper Project.
A new drill program is planned to identify all remaining mineralised zones and their controls within the main Haib area while reducing the drill spacing to convert resources to the indicated levels in the Target 1, Target 2, and Target 3 areas.
Drill planning is far advanced, and the fieldwork program is expected to start in August 2024.
A follow-on metallurgical test work program has been designed, including crushing, milling, flotation testwork for higher-grade material, coarse particle flotation, and bacterial heap leaching of lower-grade samples.
In conjunction with the new metallurgical program, the team is defining additional scopes of work that need to be completed before further feasibility studies can commence.
Trade-off studies will focus on value chain optimisation and mine planning for the updated mineral resource estimate (MRE) when available.
More than 70,000 meters of drilling have been conducted at Haib since the 1970s, and significant exploration programs have been led by companies such as Falconbridge (1964), Rio Tinto (1975), and Teck (2014).
Teck remains a strategic and supportive shareholder.
In addition to extensive drilling, metallurgical testing, geophysics, and geological mapping, various mine modelling and technical studies have been completed.
Koryx Copper CEO Pierre Léveillé said the final results from our 2024 drill program demonstrate that the deposit can deliver grades over 0.3% Cu for substantial widths within the project area.
Léveillé also said the results indicate the potential to significantly improve the average grade of the deposit compared to previous mineral resource estimates.
“These results are also important in that they also indicate above-average grades in the outer limits of the deposit. This bodes well for the imminent, updated NI 43-101 Mineral Resource Estimate and follow-up drill program due to start in August 2024.”