Gran Colombia Gold (GCM-T) has made a significant boost to its resources at its Marmato project in Colombia, even if it did cost a bit of grade to do so.
The company says measured and indicated resources now stand at 409.7 million tonnes grading 0.9 grams gold and 4.87 grams silver for 11.8 million ounces of gold and 80.3 million ounces of silver. Those new numbers represent an 18% increase in gold ounces and a 26% increase in silver ounces compared to the last resource estimate which was released last September.
On top of those ounces, the project now has additional inferred resources of 79.1 million tonnes grading 1.02 grams gold and 3.71 grams silver for 2.6 million ounces of gold and 9.4 million ounces of silver.
While Gran Colombia managed to boost gold resources by 2 million ounces it did so at the cost of a higher grade.
The previous resource estimate outlined ore with an average grade of 1.0 grams gold, while the current has an average grade of 0.9 grams. That 10% drop came from largely from more rock being counted as ore thanks to higher gold prices. Where the former resource calculation used a gold price of US$1,200 per oz., the current one uses US$1,400 per ounce.
Other key metrics used in the calculation were a cut-off grade of 0.3 grams gold and gold recoveries of 88%.
And while Gran Colombia has already outlined a resource big enough to rank the project in the top 2% in the world in terms of total ounces, the company still thinks there is more to be found.
Additional tonnage is expected to come from deep zone mineralization which is hinted at in a subset to the latest results.
So while the resources outlined above occur in a potential open pit Gran Colombia has begun to define resources below the pit shell as well.
The deeper zone has an indicated resource of 300,000 tonnes grading 2.05 grams gold and 14.26 grams silver for 17,000 oz. of gold and 118,000 oz. of silver and 6.7 million tonnes grading 2.62 grams gold and 4.41 grams silver for 563,000 oz. of gold and 947,000 oz. of silver.
Those deeper ounces are currently being considered as underground resources, but the company points out that there is the possibility of mining them via open pit methods as well.
In Toronto on June 21 the company’s shares were off 2% to 32.5¢ on 515,130 shares traded.
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