Publicly listed Lepanto Consolidated Mining Company (LC) has commenced its copper-gold project beginning with 1,048 dry metric tons (DMT) of copper-gold concentrate to be shipped this week.
This is the result of the company’s successful exploration and evaluation of over 7.764 metric tons (MT) of resources at its former enargite mine area in Benguet.
LC has finished in October 2015 47,275 meters of underground drilling and exploration of copper-gold resources at the mine site.
“This program has successfully discovered combined, indicated, and inferred resources of 7.746 MT at 0.896 percent copper and 1.974 grams per tonne (g/t) gold,” LC said in a statement told at the Philippine Stock Exchange Wednesday.
Meanwhile, LC has also outlined geologic resource of 7.29 MT at 1.69 percent copper and 2.02 g/t gold in its current drilling operations.
Further explorations at the site are expected to bring these areas into inferred and indicated categories.
LC noted that it will continue to produce gold ore from its Victoria Gold Project in Mankayan, Benguet.
Earlier, the miner’s exploration team discovered previously unrecognized gold-bearing veins of quartz-pyrite-gold (QPG) in nearby spots at the Victoria Gold Project, LC said in July.