Nugget Pond Gold Plant

Pre-concentrated material together with fines will be trucked from the Hammerdown Project site to the Nugget Pond mill located on the Baie Verte peninsula. The Nugget Pond mill was built in 1995 by Richmont Mines and operated as a gold plant for over 10 years, processing ore from both the former Nugget Pond and Hammerdown gold mines.  Historic gold recoveries on Hammerdown mineralization at Nugget Pond were over 97.0% during past operations and recent metallurgical test work on new samples from Hammerdown confirmed gold recoveries of 95.5% can be expected through the whole-ore leach circuit.  The metallurgical work shows that a fine grind (80% passing 50 microns) is necessary to achieve the high recovery rate, and the proposed additions to the existing Nugget Pond flowsheet include a new material handling system for truck offloading and stockpilling plus additional grinding capacity installed ahead of the leach circuit. Refurbishment of the existing carbon-in-pulp (CIP) circuit is also proposed. A gold doré would be produced by the existing refinery. Tailings would be pumped to the existing Tailings Storage Facility (TSF), for disposal.