New Found Gold Corp has officially announced the results from 2024 Phase II Metallurgical Testing Program conducted on drill core samples collected from the Iceberg and Iceberg East zones as part of its exploration program.
According to certain reports, the Phase II metallurgical testing commenced in 2024. Once initiated, this particular phase would go on to generate 46 Variability Composites, and it will do that from drill core with a combined weight of 1,400 kilograms.
Next up, we must dig into how the weighted average gold extraction from all 46 Variability Composite samples, broken out by the 10 cross section lines, was found to be at 96.9%. Markedly enough, these gold extractions were achieved using both gravity separation and conventional carbon-in-leach (CIL) on the gravity tails.
Another detail worth a mention here is rooted in the stated results actually complementing what we saw during the Phase I metallurgical test, where the weighted average gold extraction settled between 90.1% and 96.7% for Keats Main, Golden Joint and Lotto.
To top that, New Found Gold is also conducting a separate metallurgical testing focused on Keats West with composites having been selected and shipped to Base Metallurgical Laboratory Ltd and results anticipated in Q2 2025.
“The Iceberg and Iceberg East zones have similar geology and mineralization style to the Keats Main zone that was previously reported earlier this year. Results from the Iceberg and Iceberg East zones also indicate excellent gold recoveries from the high-grade materials observed at the Queensway Project. In addition, this test work confirms that the mineralization from Iceberg and Iceberg East can be processed using conventional gravity separation and carbon-in-leach (CIL) technology,” said Ron Hampton, Chief Development Officer of New Found Gold Corp.
Among other things, we must mention that, due to similarities in the mineralization styles found in both Iceberg and Iceberg East zones, the sampled drill core material was combined to ensure sufficient material for metallurgical testing. This would translate to an estimated 340 meters of drill core, out of which one Master Composite was assembled. Going by the available, the scope of work consisted of chemical and mineralogical analyses, environmental characterization, establishment of comminution parameters, gold extraction methods, reagent consumption, cyanide detoxification, and solid-liquid separation properties for process and tailings streams.
We referred to Iceberg and Iceberg East being similar to the other mineralized zones tested in the area, but what we still haven’t touched on how it is because these other mineralized zones have been found to contain significant free-milling gold which is amenable to both gravity and leach extraction. The stated free gold grains reportedly contain greater than 150 microns in size, predominantly in the quartz veins located throughout these zones.
Not just that, the average gold weighted extraction percentage for adjacent tested mineralized zones, Keats Main, Lotto and Golden Joint, also ranged from 90.1% to 96.9%, when reduced to a product size of 75 microns. Achieved on the back of gravity separation and conventional carbon-in-leach (CIL) technologies, the whole exercise would realize lower gold extraction values for individual Variability Composite samples that had gold head assay values of less than 2 grams per tonne.
Moving on, lower gold extraction trends were also observed in samples containing organic carbon, as well as arsenopyrite and pyrite. In fact, despite tested mineralized zone being less than 0.1%, it was confirmed that some of the sampled material was mildly preg-robbing.
In case that wasn’t enough, a strong correlation between tailings gold grade and arsenic content was observed; with the tail grade increasing as a function of increasing arsenic content.
