Lafayette reports higher gold, silver reserves in Albay

Australian mining company Lafayette Mining Ltd. said its exploration drilling at the Hixbar mine area within its Rapu-Rapu mining area in Albay is expected to further increase gold and silver reserves and extend the resource’s mine life.

"Exploration drilling at the Hixbar mine area has so proven to be successful, we expect this to give us an additional resource of 1.6 million metric tons," said Lafayette Mining’s chief executive officer Andrew McIlwain in an interview during the recently concluded 6th Asia-Pacific Mining Conference in Makati which was organized by the ASEAN Federation of Mining Associations.

The Hixbar deposit is located less than three kilometers west of Lafayette’s Rapu Rapu project, and was previously an open cut and underground mine that was commercially developed in the 1930s and produced copper and pyrite through to the early 1960s.

Mcllwain earlier said the mineralization at Hixbar is a repetition of what the mining firm is currently doing in the Ungay orebody.

"This drilling has concentrated on the gold oxide potential surrounding the old mine. Encouragingly, these results are all from within a maximum depth of around 20 meters from surface and mining will be simple. Also, we identified the continuation of deeper sulphide mineralization and we will work towards confirming this into resource status as well," he said.

Earlier this year, Lafayette Mining Ltd. commissioned its gold plant at the Rapu-Rapu polymetallic project in Albay and will begin its production phase in the fourth quarter this year.

Mcllwain said the company poured its first gold in the plant and the next step would be to continue with the commissioning of the base metals plant toward the fourth quarter when it starts to produce copper and zinc concentrates.

The Rapu-Rapu polymetallic project is the first foreign-funded mine to be commissioned in the Philippines in 30 years.

The project’s mineral resource will support an initial six-year mine life and is projected to yield 10,000 metric tons (MT) of copper concentrates, 14,000 MT of zinc concentrates, 50,000 ounces of gold and 600,000 ounces of silver annually.