“If we drill a hole and we see there’s gold, we can send it for testing and get the results potentially while the drill is still drilling,” he adds. “Then we can adapt and design another drill hole based on those results. Typically, companies like ours would have to wait potentially months to get drill results back, because there are only so many labs that are available and they are usually pretty busy. We typically get our results within a week – and if we have a really important sample, we can get it back within a couple days.” Returning to the topic of vertical integration, Patrick points out that in conjunction with the development of the mine, Lion One has also developed a gold processing plant, all the necessary supporting infrastructure, and a state-ofthe-art tailings storage facility, which is located 3.5 kilometres away from the Tuvatu mine site. Once gold-bearing material is extracted from the Tuvatu mine, it is sent to the processing plant to produce gold. This process starts with a two-stage crushing circuit, which consists of a primary jaw crusher, a secondary cone crusher, and a system of three conveyor belts that transport the material between the two crushers and on to the processing plant. Material from the crushing circuit is then fed into an integrated two-stage gravity concentration circuit, after which some concentrates are treated by an intensive cyanide leaching reactor while the remainder are leached using conventional cyanide Carbon in Leach (CIL) technology. Gold is recovered from the gold laden carbon using conventional adsorption desorption recovery (ADR) technology and smelted on site to produce gold doré bars. From there, the leached JANUARY 2024 Lion One Metals’ first gold pour, Fiji Day October 10th, 2023.
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