- ESGold is a gold and silver company preparing for production later this year at a tailings reclamation site in Quebec abandoned by the previous operator
- The gold and silver resource developer expects to concentrate on reprocessing the tailings for the near-term to extract mica and any remaining gold and silver, anticipating that the resulting mica concentrate will be useful in a wide variety of building and roadwork materials
- ESGold plans to build revenue through the reuse project, which can then help fund planned exploration at its Quebec property covering 13,116 hectares (about 32,410 acres)
- The company is currently conducting testing to see if it can effectively streamline production by processing gold and silver in one of the tailings sites at the property into a concentrate that would allow the company to bypass traditional circuit steps and pour bullion directly on site
Gold and silver company ESGold (CSE: ESAU) (OTCQB: ESAUF) is testing a potential refining process that may reduce the company’s costs and environmental impact as it ramps up preparations for starting a tailings production operation.
ESGold holds 265 mining claims on the historic Montauban mine site in Quebec, covering 13,116 hectares (about 32,410 acres) 80 kilometers (49.7 miles) west of the province’s capital city.
The company is readying a rehabilitation project that will reprocess tailings abandoned by a former operator starting this fall, which will in turn help to fund anticipated new gold and silver exploration at the property.
The refining process being tested uses a Humphrey spiral concentrator similar to others installed in a plant on the site for the fall operation, which will use the concentrators in a gravity separation circuit designed to process up to 1,000 metric tons per day (“TPD”) of the site’s tailings (https://ibn.fm/JRTYC).
But the testing under way at the site is assessing the potential for generating a high-grade concentrate of gold and silver, drawing feedstock material from a historic stockpile known to contain significantly higher concentrations of gold and silver than the Anacon Lead 1 tailings site identified by the company as its primary focus for reclamation.
ESGold’s goal is to produce a concentrate representing less than 3 percent of the feed mass while capturing more than 50 percent of the gold and silver content, which could allow the company to bypass traditional circuit steps and pour bullion directly on site, according to a news release published May 30 (https://ibn.fm/1L1Hc).
Success in achieving the goal would permit the company to reduce processing time, optimizing throughput efficiency, and reduce cyanide consumption in the process to sustain ESGold’s low-environmental-footprint aims.
The testing is expected to take a week, with lab results expected within a month of completing the test.
ESGold is working with private consultancy DMCMS Inc. to deliver environmentally friendly, sustainable materials using a clean technology that fuses mine waste with an organic polymer to create a concentrate stronger than concrete that will be useful in building materials such as bricks, cinder blocks, paving stones, patio tiles, parking columns, and highway Jersey barriers.
“Most companies do a ton of exploration, then have to get their permits and have to go into production. We’re not. We’re going to be cash-flow positive by this time (in 2025),” ESGold President and Director Brad Kitchen said in a November 2024 interview (https://ibn.fm/4tvX2).
For more information, visit the company’s website at https://esgold.com.
NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to ESAUF are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/ESAUF
