Golden Predator Mining Corp. [GPY-TSXV; NTGSF-OTCQX] said Wednesday September 2 that it has acquired a 20% stake in Group 11 Technologies Inc., a privately-owned U.S. company that is committed to testing and implementing non-invasive in-situ recovery (ISR) of precious metals with the use of environmentally-friendly solutions.
In-situ recovery is a non-invasive extraction method that has transformed the uranium industry. In ISR, diluted water-based solutions are circulated underground, dissolving the targeted metals, and returned to surface for further processing and recovery of the targeted metals.
ISR is viewed as being environmentally friendly because it does not require the use of open pits, or underground tunnels, tailings facilities or waste dumps. There is also no discharge of noxious chemicals at surface.
“It therefore has the potential to be a low-impact, low capital cost mining method,” Golden Predator said in a press release.
Golden Predator’s flagship asset is the former Brewery Creek open pit, heap leach gold mine in the Yukon. Golden Predator said the Yukon government is allowing the company to proceed with the restart of the mine without having to re-enter the permitting process.
According to recent estimates, Brewery Creek contains an indicated oxide resource of 21.14 million tonnes at 1.125 g/t gold or 765,000 ounces. Recent estimates include an additional 8.57 million tonnes of inferred sulphide resources grading 0.985 g/t gold or 270,000 ounces.
Located 45 km from Dawson City, from 1996 to 2002, approximately 280,000 ounces of gold was produced from seven near-surface oxide deposits along Brewery Creek’s reserve trend.
The mine was put into temporary closure 2002 following a collapse in the gold price below US$300/oz. Golden Predator is taking a stake in Group 11 after recently launching a feasibility study with the aim of restarting heap leach operations.
Group 11 was founded and is owned by enCore Energy Corp. [EU-TSXV; ENCUF-OTCQB] and EnviroLeach Technologies Inc. [ETI-CSE, EVLLF-OTCQB], which each own 40% of the company.
Golden Predator partnered with EnviroLeach to process sulphide concentrates using a test processing plant and custom-built mobile extraction unit at its Yukon properties, which include the 3 Aces gold project. The 3 Aces hosts an orogenic gold project and is located northeast of Watson Lake.
“The cumulative testing resulted in a total calculated recovery of 93.17% of the gold contained in the concentrate,” Golden Predator said. “This work led to the eventually combination of Golden Predator’s mobile extraction unit, encore Energy’s ISR expertise and EnviroLeach’s technology in partnership within Group 11 to consider alternative extraction technologies for precious metals,” Golden Predator said.