TTM Releases Additional Metallurgical Testwork for their Dynasty Project

Our gold Investment Titan Minerals (ASX: TTM) just put out some metallurgical testwork results from its Dynasty project in Ecuador.

Dynasty is one of TTM’s four key projects in Ecuador and it has a current 3.1M ounce gold and 22M ounce silver JORC resource.

(TTM is currently drilling the project looking to upgrade that resource by the middle of this year)

Today’s news was more of a technical update from TTM showing the market how well the gold from Dynasty could be recovered.

TTM showed that 85-88% of the gold at its Cerro Verde prospect could be recovered using conventional ‘carbon-in-leach’ (CIL) processing methods.

(it also showed that ~70-75% of silver would also be recovered while trying to extract the gold.

We liked today’s announcement especially because most of the Dynasty resource is from Cerro Verde, so TTM is showing strong recoveries from the biggest part of its JORC resource.

For context - Cerro Verde hosts ~1.9M ounces of gold and 12m ounces of silver (of the project total of 3.1m ounce gold, 22m ounce silver).

The other major positive from today’s announcement is that there is still plenty of scope to improve recoveries further.

TTM mentioned in the announcement that more work would be done to optimise processing and improve current recovery rates:

Overall we think today’s results are a strong start on the metwork front.

What is metallurgical testwork and why does it matter?

Making discoveries and then defining JORC resources are only one part of the junior exploration game.

Often times the make or break for any discovery is how it stacks up from a metallurgical perspective.

Metallurgical testing is the technical work that happens in a lab which ultimately determines whether or not the discovery can be mined and the valuable materials can be extracted economically.

Testwork results can make or break discoveries.

Low recoveries and difficult to process discoveries can put projects on ice.

High recoveries and well understood (conventional) processing methods can mean projects have a higher chance of eventually being developed and making it to market.

Metwork is always happening in the background and as companies learn more about their discovery the processing methods can be refined to work out and optimal set of steps to get the highest possible recoveries.

This article from the CSIRO is a good read for anyone wanting to learn more about Metallurgical testwork.

What else is TTM up to at its Dynasty project?

TTM is currently in the middle of a 10,000m drill program across its Dynasty project.

Most of the work TTM is doing at the moment is infill drilling, meaning TTM is looking to confirm what’s already known and at times, check if they extend in any direction.

For now TTM’s focus looks to be on getting a resource update finished so that the project can move to scoping studies.

(The metwork results from today will also be important for the scoping studies).

Later in the year TTM will be doing drilling across its regional targets - that’s the blue sky exploration drilling we are looking forward to the most.

That’s when there will be the potential for TTM to further add to its resource with new discoveries.

What’s next for TTM?

More drilling at Dynasty gold project 🔄

We expect the company to complete this drilling over the coming months and set itself up for a resource upgrade.

Resource upgrade/update at Dynasty 🔲

By mid-year we expect TTM to publish a resource upgrade over its Dynasty Project.

Drilling results from the Linderos Copper project 🔄

TTM (through its Joint Venture) with a subsidiary of Hancock (Gina Rinehart) is also drilling out its Linderos copper project.

That drilling is funded by Hancock under the US$120M farm-in deal TTM signed with Hancock late last year.

TTM just finished 10,000m of drilling at that project so we should get some results from there in the coming months.

We think this could be source of unexpected upside for TTM if the results confirm more of the extensive copper mineralisation that attracted Hancock’s subsidiary to TTM’s JV in the first place.