Panther Metals (PALM) has commenced a series of workstreams to quantify and evaluate the contained high-grade gold, gallium, silver, zinc, copper and cobalt and other recoverable minerals located within the historic Winston Lake Mine tailings storage facility in Ontario, Canada.
Assay results from the recent initial sampling programme, comprising a 680 metre longitudinal transept across the one kilometre long tailings facility returned high grade gold up to 0.814 grams gold, with up to 21.9 grams silver, 2.20% zinc, 0.20% copper, 496 parts per million cobalt and 122 ppm gallium.
A review of historical mine tailings production reconciliation and volumetric accounting records has now commenced.
First Quantum Minerals has provided Panther with access to the Winston Lake Mine historical reports outlining processing feed head grade, grades recovered to the zinc and copper concentrates and the grades of materials reporting to the tailings.
This data is supplemented by access to First Quantum personnel involved with maintaining and monitoring the tailings who were involved with production when the mine was active.
In addition, further hardcopy records, plans and maps are available in the archives onsite. The review of this documentation and calculations will help establish a baseline for the development of a working economic assessment model and will feed into additional workstreams.
In addition, Panther is now agreeing the relevant scope of works with the preferred drilling and geological contractors, tailings and mineral processing specialists ahead of formal appointment. The contractors and specialists will be involved with the design and execution of a number of key studies, including the metallurgical sampling programme, metallurgical characterisation and deportment studies, resource calculations, and work to determine optimal reprocessing, commodity capture and tailings retreatment routes.
In conjunction with these technical studies, Panther has also commenced the necessary engagement with various relevant ministries to map out the permitting pathway to reprocess the tailings from the Winston brownfield mine site.
Whilst Panther currently views gold, silver, zinc and copper as the primary target commodities for the envisaged tailings reprocessing, it will also be undertaking a review of the potential value attributable to other recoverable critical mineral components in the tailings such as the gallium, germanium, indium and manganese which are all linked to the zinc mineral sphalerite, and which are sought by the electronics and renewable energy industries.
"Since announcing the exciting sample assay results from the Winston Lake Mine tailings storage facility, we have been very busy setting out and commencing a series of workstreams which are designed to fast-track the assessment and build a robust economic case to reprocess and extract value from the tailings,” said Darren Hazelwood, chief executive of Panther.
“The assay results strongly supported the initiation of the metallurgical sampling and resource determination work which will feed into the mineral processing studies required to determine the most economic and environmentally sensitive route for extracting the precious metals and critical minerals from the tailings. Last month the Government of Ontario instated a new regulatory regime designed to streamline the tailing reprocessing permitting process that will allow recovery of minerals activities to occur faster without requiring a closure plan. Panther have embarked on the permitting process which will be run in tandem with the technical studies, in order to shorten our timeline to projected cashflow.”
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The planned workstreams are designed to provide the necessary numbers to quantify the economic value recoverable from the tailings and to constrain the costs involved with bringing the tailing re-processing into production and generating significant cashflow to advance the business. In short, the idea is to get the tailings facility into production to provide enough cash flow for Panther to develop the other assets that it has in its portfolio.