KAU to drill waste dumps next to Victorian processing plant

Our gold producing Investment Kaiser Reef (ASX: KAU) is looking at ways to get more feed through its processing plant in Victoria…

KAU is currently producing gold from its Tasmanian asset, with over 8,000 ounces of gold produced last quarter.

KAU also owns a 350ktpa processing plant in Victoria which is currently operating well below its full capacity.

KAU’s was previously filling that plant with material from its A1 mine in North-East Victoria.

More recently, though, KAU’s focus has been the Maldon project, which is 4km away from the processing plant.

KAU’s Maldon project is home to Australia’s highest grade gold mine - Nuggety Reef - which produced ~301k ounces of gold at ~187g/t gold grades back in 1850-1860’s.

KAU is now looking to drill the waste dumps around Nuggety Reef AND the old Union Hill pit where KAU is seeing:

1. Union Hill waste dumps - 50,000m2 area with an estimated volume of over 410,000 cubic metres. Here, a previous trial run of 2,628 tonnes of material returned 0.86g/t gold with recovery rates around 99%.
2. Nuggety Reef waste dumps - Area of nearly 16,000m2 where KAU has sampled grades up to ~1.8g/t from rock chips. A bulk sample from here (for 2,401 tonnes of material) back in 2018 returned gold grades of ~2.5g/t gold with recovery rates of ~87.1%.

KAU will be drilling those waste dumps to get a better understanding of grade across those giant (50k and 16k square metre) areas.

If we see the grades staying consistent across the entire waste dumps, they could make for interesting sources of feedstock for KAU’s processing plant…

With how close the two waste dumps are to KAU’s processing plant we think those sort of grades in those quantities could become interesting for KAU given:

• The cost of getting this to the processing plant would be minimal compared to a normal mining operation (as it is already at surface), potentially can be loaded straight onto transport,
• KAU owns the plant nearby which has available capacity, and
• Gold prices are where they currently are

Here is an image of the planned drilling program at Union Hill, which is fully permitted for these works and potential processing:

(Source)

Here is the Nuggety deposit which could also go through the same process (pending permitting):

(Source)

What’s next for KAU?

Cost optimisation and exploration at Tasmanian project (Henty) 🔄

The main thing we want to see at Henty is for KAU to increase production rates and optimise costs.

Today the company confirmed that upgrades to the plant are mostly in place with trials to begin shortly on increasing throughput.

(Source)

Here KAU’s new managing director Brad Valiukas talking about the optimisation work KAU is doing on site:

Watch it here: Kaiser Reef: Henty Growth, Maldon Potential & A1 Update (KAU.ASX)

Exploration program at Maldon 🔄

Now with KAU’s drilling at Maldon complete and results released, we want to see follow up drilling on the results announced today.

With KAU expecting to begin works to re-access and rehabilitate the underground decline in January we are looking forward to seeing KAU drill new areas of Maldon from underground. (source)