PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Gold junior Havilah Resources will fast-track feasibility studies into its North Portia copper-gold deposit, in South Australia, in the hopes of bringing the project on line as soon as mining operations at the current Portia mine wind down at the end of 2016.

The North Portia deposit lies some 500 m from the Portia operation and contains an indicated and inferred Joint Ore Reserves Committee- (Jorc-) compliant resource of 11.3-million tonnes, grading 0.89% copper and 0.64 g/t gold.

The deposit had been placed on the backburner as Havilah had aimed to develop the Kalkaroo copper-gold mine first, and in future use that processing plant to treat the North Portia ore.

However, the ASX-listed miner said that, given the new synergies provided by the adjacent Portia gold mine, a preliminary scoping plan has been completed for North Portia, based on an updated resource block model.

This work has indicated that there was some 3.7-million tonnes of mainly oxidised material at an average grade of 0.68% copper and 0.49 g/t gold, containing some 25 000 t of copper and 58 000 oz of gold, which could be accessed by the removal of some 25-million tonnes of overburden.

“With all mining infrastructure and plant and equipment now in place at Portia, it makes sense for us to look at the viability of mining North Portia as a sequential follow-on operation,” said Havilah MD Chris Giles.

“Like Portia, this will be a major overburden removal exercise and what we learn in mining the soft clay material at Portia will be able to be directly applied to North Portia to optimise the mining efficiency and safety.”

Havilah would now start work to determine recoveries of secondary copper, undertake strategic infill reverse circulation drilling to increase the level of resource confidence, complete groundwater studies and geotechnical studies.

Giles said planned metallurgical testing would establish the optimum recovery methods and help to determine to what extent the Portia processing plant could be used.

“If the economics justify the mining development, then, when the time comes, we will discuss with our contractor how we can go about it to achieve a mutually beneficial outcome.”

First gold from Portia was expected in July 2016. The mine is estimated to host a Jorc-compliant inferred resource of 720 000 t, grading 2.9 g/t gold for 67 000 oz of contained gravity recoverable gold.