Pan Asia Metals has kicked off a metallurgical bulk testing program on copper oxide ore from its Rosario project in Chile’s Central Copper Belt (CCB) in a bid to establish the ore’s amenability to heap leaching.

The company has locked down the Chilean National Mining Company (ENAMI) to undertake the testwork on bulk samples of its copper oxide ores from surface and on below-surface mineralisation drawn from drill samples.

The Rosario project is one of the more recent early-stage copper projects in Chile’s CCB and sits about 100km from the ENAMI ( Empresa Nacional de Mineria) copper oxide-sulphide treatment plant at Salado. The operation is also just 50km north of Codelco’s Portorillos copper smelter, about 40km from the nearest airport and some 130km from the nearest coastal port at Chanaral.

The object of the proposed testwork is to examine the amenability of the oxide ore to copper extraction via a combination of heap leach and solvent-extraction electrowinning (SX-EW) to produce copper cathode.

‘Field observations suggest strong potential for a reasonably large oxide zone.’

Pan Asia Metals managing director Paul Lock

Various elements of the testwork is planned to determine optimum crush size, agglomeration characteristics, reagent consumptions, leach rates and other relevant data that could be realistically translated to their application in feasibility studies. Management is looking to ENAMI to provide the adequate processing capacity to be able to handle the company’s anticipated sample size.

Pan Asia Metals managing director Paul Lock said: “With the IP geophysics survey scheduled to start in about 4 weeks, our plan is to progress through to inaugural resource and preliminary feasibility studies as quickly as possible. We will be focusing on the oxide zones first up, and hence the testwork discussions with ENAMI in El Salado. Field observations suggest strong potential for a reasonably large oxide zone.”

The company expects to start its induced-polarisation (IP) program at Rosario next month, with a proposed 19 IP lines for a total of about 27 line kilometres and it has commissioned Quantec Geoscience to undertake the work. It will be its first-ever geophysical survey at the project.

The work is designed to sniff out manto-style copper mineralisation in the survey area for potentially copper-mineralised drill targets, with a view to identifying their respective sizes, host lithologies and local structural controls. Mantos are a type of polymetallic replacement deposit commonly formed by the replacement of sedimentary, metal-bearing solutions near igneous intrusions.