Expansion complete, Gordex set to pour 12,000 oz in ’88

Although the company poured its first gold bar in June, 1986, Gordex Minerals of Saint John, N.B., has had to find a technological fix to bring its small Cape Spencer gold mine officially into commercial production this year.

That technical fix is called vat leaching — a technique which involves dumping ore, crushed to –5/8-inch, into huge, polyurethane- lined depressions capable of holding 53,000 tons of ore, then flood- leaching it with dilute cyanide solutions.

By covering the piles with a polyurethane cover, Gordex should be able to control the amount of dilution of those solutions during the wet springtime of the Fundy coast.

It has cost Gordex about $1.8 million to accomplish this, according to President Hal Pawson, bringing the total amount spent on the property so far to $3.5 million.

A carbon adsorption column, manufactured by Cappes Cassiday and Associates of Sparkes, Nev., has been installed to handle the added volume of gold-laden solutions.

Estimates are the company will pour about 4,000 oz of the yellow metal this fiscal year, which ends Feb 29 and about 12,000 oz in fiscal 1988.

Recovery rates are about 80% and total production costs are about $16.90(C) per ton of ore or $230(US) per oz of gold produced.

With reserves of about one million tons at a grade of 0.057 oz gold per ton, the operation has enough ore to last about four years. About 200,000 tons will be leached in 1988.

Exploration work is ongoing in the area to develop new reserves.