Shares in ECR Minerals (ECR ) moved sharply upwards after the Australia-based gold exploration and development company announced further progress towards production at the Maddens and Brothers mines in Queensland.
ECR has a 50% interest in the wider Maddens gold project, which hosts both Maddens and Brothers.
The company has several operational and technical workstreams for the development of the Maddens gold project, including underground mine development, geological evaluation, processing plant enhancements and preparations for trial alluvial mining.
Underground development at the Maddens underground mine has identified an additional mineralised quartz vein containing visible gold, with ore now being stockpiled on the run-of-mine pad ahead of future processing.
The next phase of the development of the decline is expected to commence shortly.
The plan is to install a Knelson gravity concentrator in the coming weeks. This will support enhanced gravity gold recovery as Maddens progresses towards production.
Meanwhile, operational personnel and equipment continue to be mobilised to the Brothers mining lease area, following the strategic redeployment from Raglan, with encouraging prospecting results supporting the planned trial alluvial mining programme.
Recently completed LiDAR survey has enhanced geological understanding of Maddens, with preliminary interpretation indicating potential extensions of the Maddens mineralised system towards the historic Sisters mine.
"One of the most exciting aspects of our recent work is seeing the geological model continue to evolve as underground development progresses,” said Mike Parker, non-executive director of ECR.
“Every metre of development not only moves us closer to production but may also provide valuable geological information that improves our understanding of the overall Maddens gold project. The identification of a separate mineralised quartz vein during development, together with the early interpretation of our recently completed LiDAR survey, suggests that there is still considerable potential to expand our understanding of the mineralised system beyond the historically mined areas. While further work is required, these are exactly the types of observations we had hoped to see as we systematically develop the project. Perhaps, most importantly, our focus is now firmly on execution. Underground development is generating ore for future processing, preparations for the next phase of decline development are well advanced and upgrades to the processing plant continue. Collectively, these activities represent important steps towards bringing the Maddens gold project into production."
View from Vox
Solid progress from ECR, as gold production now looms, and not just from one quarter. Alluvial and underground mining at Maddens will lay the foundation for ECR’s wider plan to generate cashflow from multiple producing gold projects in Australia. Even with the gold price jumping around in the context of the Iran war, these operations ought to generate significant margin, as ECR’s chairman Nick Tulloch told Vox in a video interview recently. The company is about to be transformed.