Red River Resources has announced plans to develop the high-grade, gold-rich, polymetallic Liontown deposit as the next mine at its Thalanga operations in northern Queensland. Thalanga is an ongoing mining operation producing copper, lead, and zinc concentrates, with significant gold and silver credits. The Thalanga mill has 650,000 metric tons per year (mt/y) of throughput capacity with current utilization at 350,000 mt/y to 450,000 mt/y, so opportunity exists to process additional tonnage at incremental processing costs.
Red River has received all assays from its recent drilling program at Liontown, which delivered further high-grade, gold-rich, polymetallic results from the New Queen lens and intersected high-grade copper-gold mineralization in the Carrington lode. One notable 1.10-meter (m) intercept assayed 0.5% copper, 13.7% lead, 29.6% zinc, 9.8 g/mt gold, and 371 g/mt silver from 56.20 m down-hole.
The company is updating a mineral resource estimate for Liontown, which it expects to complete in March.
Continued high-grade polymetallic results from Liontown have led Red River to prioritize development of the deposit ahead of the zinc-rich Waterloo deposit, which will be placed on hold. Mine production from Liontown will increase mill throughput at Thalanga, as well as gold and silver production.
Red River has an existing mining lease at Liontown, which may enable early works to commence for development of the New Queen lens.
Red River Managing Director Mel Palancian said, “Given the results from Liontown, in particular the New Queens lens in 2019 drilling, there is a strong rationale for fast-tracking Liontown’s development as our next priority. We are finalizing a mineral resource update and mine planning for the deposit.
“Prioritizing development of Liontown will allow us to increase production of gold and copper at Thalanga while we continue restart studies for our Hillgrove gold project in New South Wales.
“We previously planned to develop Waterloo as the third deposit at Thalanga, but the discovery of the Liontown East deposit and the New Queen drilling results have shown that Liontown is a much larger mineralized system, and it is still open along strike and at depth.”
