Orexplore Technologies Limited (ASX: OXT), a technology company focused on transforming Orebody Knowledge through digitising drill core, has been conducting commercial validation tests on its new gold detection technology with multiple tier-1 gold mining companies.
Orexplore’s new technology can find nuggety gold quickly on-site at the core farm, instead of waiting for weeks or months for lab results. It aims to cut down the number of drill samples that need lab analysis and potentially speed up the use of OXT gold grades for better grade control and nugget characterisation.
The new system detects nuggets larger than ~100 micrometres in size in the whole core volume.
Nuggety gold mines are very hard to analyse but very valuable. Technology like Orexplore’s new system can help with this value discovery and enhancement of the mine.
Gold grade may be low on average because high-grade core is rare and hard to sample. There is also a “nugget effect” (where two halves of the same core have different grades), which can affect the gold estimates. Also, designing and operating a suitable mine and plant is hard given this uncertainty.
The OXT approach analyses coarse gold without cutting or subsampling within minutes of digitising it on site. Also, the core is not crushed, so the gold particles can be studied with their minerals and structures in three dimensions.
This helps miners get a deeper understanding of the gold mineralisation, to improve drill targeting, grade control, resource estimation, and mine and plant design.
Orexplore’s Managing Director, Brett Giroud, said:
“Gold mining is challenging, and nuggety gold deposits are one of the hardest. We believe our GX10® system can help improve the sector.”
“As a full-core digitisation technology, we can analyse nuggety gold mineralisation fast at the core farm. This data can support fast site-based grade control processes and improve the gold characterisation to unlock the value of nuggety gold deposits.
“Orexplore is seeing good initial commercial testing results and external validation of our technology compared to traditional lab methods and time for some of our major gold mining customers.
“The market opportunity is large, and the trend towards faster and closer Orebody Knowledge and project economics is growing, as miners seek to optimise their operations and resources. This nuggety gold characterisation capability at the core farm is another step towards rapid field-sensed Orebody knowledge, and further strengthens Orexplore as an important partner in achieving this transformation with its customers.”
Several big gold mining companies are testing the technology to confirm how well it works, comparing OXT nugget grades with lab methods and the fast speed of results, and new value from co-located minerals and structures in the core.
Initial testing has been successful, leading to more interest for bigger commercial lab and site trials, showing a growing interest in the wider use and benefits of the technology.
Orexplore’s GeoCore X10® drill core digitiser is used across the mining value chain in base, precious, and critical minerals, and metals mining. Key targeted gold mining uses of the new nuggety gold system are exploration, mine and process Design, and production.