Britannia and Bren-Mar sink decline at Lexington project

An underground exploration decline has reached the upper mineralized zone at the Lexington gold-copper project near Grand Forks, B.C.

Partners Britannia Gold (VSE) and Bren-Mar Resources (VSE) report that the decline has been driven 240 metres of the planned 740-metre length. They plan to use the decline as underground access for diamond drilling.

During decline development, Britannia extracted ore samples for metallurgical testing. A combined gravity-flotation process recovered 96.5% of the gold, including 76% recovery by gravity concentration alone. The partners plan to extract a 9,000-tonne bulk sample for further testing, and will be drilling for additional mineralization along the southeastern extension of the prospect’s Main zone. The zone has reserves of 147,000 tonnes grading 8.9 grams gold per tonne and 0.96% copper.

Britannia also reports that work had started on its Amanda and Romy properties, 300 km north of Lima, Peru. Drilling is to begin in mid-April. Surface trenches on the Amanda property had grades as high as 11.4 grams gold over a width of 1.9 metres.