Tocvan Ventures (TOC.C) has released an update on its ongoing bulk sampling program on the Pilar project in Mexico’s Sonora state. While the company has engaged a third party to run leach tests to figure out the recovery rate of the gold in the oxide rock, it has also sent some duplicate material to the lab. A total of 148 samples were collected and those samples had an average grade of 1.87 g/t gold and 13 g/t silver. Additionally, the first batch of 32 samples had an average grade of 2.02 g/t gold and 15.6 g/t silver. That’s interesting because this material wasn’t put on the heap leach pad but will be used to test the possibility of using gravity recovery methods on the Pilar rock.
The average grade is somewhat surprising, and CEO Brodie Sutherland was also pretty happy in the press release. He stated
“The results are clearly indicating the average grade of material making up the Bulk Sample are well above our expectations for gold and silver.”
The company is making good progress with its bulk sampling efforts. A total of 800 tonnes of rock have been prepared for heap leach processing while an additional 350 tonnes of crushed material and 250 tonnes of raw (uncrushed) material is now available for gravity recovery testing.
We recently released an update report which included a Q&A session with CEO Sutherland. You can read that report again here.
Disclosure: The author has a long position in Tocvan Ventures. Tocvan is a sponsor of the website. Please read our disclaimer.
