TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Argentina-focused gold miner Patagonia Gold is on track to start the fully permitted heap-leaching operation at its Lomada de Leiva gold mine, in the province of Santa Cruz, during the second quarter.

Patagonia on Wednesday said construction of the first stage of the Lomada main heap-leach project was well advanced and on schedule.

The total pad area had been stripped of topsoil, which is being stacked for later rehabilitation purposes. Earthworks for infrastructure, holding and containment dams were under way.

The plastic membrane, irrigation pipe work and pumps had all been ordered and were scheduled for arrival and installation during this quarter. The pregnant solution would be pumped to the existing processing plant constructed for the trial in 2011.

The company said plant expansion was also under way, with an additional six carbon columns currently under construction, which were designed to increase the plant throughput to 160m³/hr of pregnant solution. The explosives magazine was also completed and is awaiting final approval.

The gold room facility, located at the Bajada property, is now fully operational and commissioned.

Patagonia Gold said it had received its first revenue from gold sales in December, being $708 186 for 425.67 oz of gold produced during the commissioning of the gold room production facility. A further 38 kg of doré containing about 1 120 oz of gold were since processed from existing carbon stocks and dispatched to the refinery.

The remaining estimated 2 000 oz of gold from existing carbon stocks, together with recent production from the trial of about 500 oz of gold were currently being processed. The trial had so far recovered about 4 045 oz of gold, representing over 66% of contained gold, and it continued to leach.

To accelerate gold production, the company had decided to expand the existing trial pad of 135 000 t to 315 000 t. This would allow the main production to be advanced by several months.

Preparation of the expansion was well advanced with earthworks completed and the membrane scheduled for installation in early February. Mining and loading of ore onto the existing pad had started, with irrigation set to start in late February.

Mining had restarted using a contract fleet until the company received delivery of its own fleet of equipment, now expected during March and April. The ramp-up to full production was expected by the middle of the second quarter, once the full fleet was operational and the overburden from the main pit area had been removed.

Meanwhile, the company reported an expanded geophysical induced polarisation (IP) study was completed over the flagship Cap-Oeste/COSE structure and surrounds, on the El Tranquilo property block, whch covered about 80 000 ha. Preliminary results revealed two new large IP anomalies parallel to and similar in intensity to Cap-Oeste/COSE.

Drilling on the structure to further explore the new prospective zone will restart in February.

The company’s stock listed on the Toronto bourse closed at 50 Canadian cents apiece on Wednesday.