Hudbay Looking To Reprocess Tailings At Flin Flon, Snow LakeHudbay is evaluating their tailings facilities at Flin Flon in an attempt to find some value in those previously discarded tailings for reprocessing them for gold content at New Britannia.
"Flin Flon Tailings Drilling Indicates Higher Grade than Expected
In 2021, Hudbay identified the opportunity to reprocess Flin Flon tailings where in excess of 100 million tonnes of tailings have been deposited for over 90 years. The company recently completed confirmatory drilling which covered about two-thirds of the facility, as shown in Figure 8. The results indicate higher zinc, copper and silver grades than predicted from historical mill records while confirming the historical gold grade. For more information, please see the table of drill hole intersections provided at the end of this news release. Hudbay plans to complete metallurgical test work on the Flin Flon tailings to assess the processing viability.
Hudbay also intends to evaluate the opportunity to reprocess the tailings at the Anderson facility in Snow Lake given significant amounts of gold have been deposited over many decades. The gold processing capacity in Snow Lake is enhanced with the recent start-up of the New Britannia mill and Hudbay’s initiatives underway to improve the gold recoveries at the Stall mill."
https://stockhouse.com/news/press-releases/2022/11/02/hudbay-provides-exploration-update-and-announces-initial-mineral-resource
Outside of Snow Lake, Hudbay seems focused on developing low grade high volume deposits in the hope of making significant profit by increasing the scale of its operations. But investors already know that Snow Lake's much higher grade VMS deposits are some of the most valuable and plentiful in the world. Rockcliff's growing asset base is an extremely valuable mineable resource that shouldn't be ignored!
Rockcliff's key mineable projects have good CUEQ grades and are awaiting the go ahead to mine.
It does appear that Hudbay has begun to shift, some of its focus, towards the need to replace its present day resource base in Snow Lake.
They have a sigificant investment in the New Britannia mill. So any evidence that Hudbay may be now looking to find additional gold containing ore to mill, in the near term, might be interpreted, as a move by them that they are moving into an ore replacement, mode of thinking, in Snow Lake.
This kind of news might also be of some interest to Kinross Gold if it has experienced any exploratory success in finding economic gold deposits in the Snow Lake region. But I am not aware of any evidence that they have doing any significant recent exploratory work here, as I have seen posted on their website.
However, Rockcliff Metals has '
anchor deposits' with substantial CuEQ grades which include some gold content. Ken Lapierre mentioned to me that he was especially enthusiastic about the prospects for the Bur deposit which Hudbay had already, planned to mine prior to their huge discovery at Lalor.
He told me that the Bur Deposit has all great upside for the company and it is by far their number one deposit.
They own it 100%. There is
5.5Mt at almost 4.0% CuEq! It is open in all directions and he believes that with more drilling, it will continue to grow.
It almost sticks out of the ground. It has a
boxcut and portal (in 2007 Hudbay was preparing to go underground and then they discovered Lalor). It has
great infrastructure. It truly has tremendous upside. Additionally, the company has the
Tower and Rail Deposits that truly can be game changers as well.
Rockcliff's Winter drilling campaign will be seeking to greatly expand the Bur deposit!
The drilling will also target the region surrounding Hudbay's Pen deposit. If they target the downward dipping plate in Rockcliff's Penex stakings, then perhaps they might also discover some massive copper sulphides plates, as well as zinc. This region has some evidence of faulting and folded geologic structures (Lalor 5 km away), so it might be logical that the Penex deposit might show some evidence of downdipping copper too!
Otherwise, there are many potential geophysical targets in that region that Rockcliff shareholders have waited years for the company to better investigate. To the west of Hudbays Pen deposit, there appear to be several targets that Rockcliff may be about to drill. There is an old core record that indicates evidence of some solid graphite, near surface mineralization.
Large flake graphite is an extremely valuable resource if found in ecomomically mineable amounts. If it is not of this nature, then this kind of graphitic mineralizaton could be indicative of a nearby deposit, similiar to the highly metamorphosed, organically containing, Bur deposit, located further to the east. It is also graphitic in nature.
These Pen and Penex regions may be an area where massive sulphide mineralization contacts areas of extreme metamorphism which may include some organic matter, that is responsible for the graphite that has been discovered there. This should prove to be an very interesting initial drilling campaign. I hope for the best!
https://rockcliffmetals.com/investors/news-releases/rockcliff-announces-private-placement-for-up-to-c-2.0-million-closes-first-tranche-of-c-1.3-million-and-outlines-2023-winter/ Rockcliff Metals will be targeting other prospects in the upcoming Winter drilling campaign. I believe that Ken would prefer to find more of the higher grade copper but zinc is also valuable component in the CUEQ equation that best defines an economic deposit. And VMS deposits are primarily a major source of zinc, then copper and gold, and/or silver.
This is my perception of what the Pen and Penex deposits may represent (see second figure below):
Ken also mentioned to me that this year the company will be marketing Rockcliff to a larger audience. Previous management were reluctant to talk to the retail sector. This in 2023 will change. This will be a better approach to bring a larger investment sector into the shareholder fold that just focusing solely on attracting the larger money players, who are important, but should not exclusively the ones to whom the company may approach in the future. Perhaps, we will see more marketing attempts on Stockhouse or on other investor forums in the future? Undoubtably, marketing will continue at Resource conferences where many wealthy individuals may be met and certain bigger miners could be better approached for any possible joint/venture discussions.
There are many possible ways to market an explorers valuable resource and to mine it!
Rockcliff shareholders should continue to remain hopeful! The company is working to extend it's already known deposits as well as finding new ones. And a better stock promotion campaign seems to be in the works!
Management is working hard to get the share price, moving higher!
All the best! Java