Lake Victoria Gold Ltd. (TSXV:LVG) - Pretreatment Lifts Leach Results, but Slime Losses Pose a Risk - Research Portal

Lake Victoria Gold Ltd. (TSXV:LVG) - Pretreatment Lifts Leach Results, but Slime Losses Pose a Risk - Research Portal

Lake Victoria Gold (LVG) reported results from metallurgical testwork completed on the shallow, highly weathered, clay-rich mineralization from Area C, the first of five pits planned at its fully permitted Imwelo Au project in Tanzania. The tests show that attrition scrubbing and desliming prior to cyanidation increases 24-hour gold extraction to 84.54% vs 49.99% on as-received material. Further, bottle roll recovery on the pre-treated fraction returned 88.15% recovery at 48 hours, compared with 70.76% on as-received material and 76.84% following desliming alone. Attrition and scrubbing also increased gravity recovery of coarse gold to 21.25% (was 12.78%) and improved slurry handling time from 220 seconds to 130 seconds. While the headline results are positive, the as-received recoveries from the weathered material at Area C of ~50-71% are well below the 90% assumed in the 2021 PFS, and up to 97% recovery reported in March from deeper transitional and fresh material. Notably, the head grade of the pretreated material dropped from 3.80 g/t Au to 2.87 g/t Au, implying ~25% of the gold is reporting to the slimes. Imwelo is a nuggety system, which could have distorted head grades, however results suggest a separate slimes treatment circuit may be required, adding capital and complexity to a US$15M build, especially as Area C is the first to be mined. That said, it is better to identify and address these issues in the lab than at commissioning, and we look forward to seeing additional test results.