How we will mine for gold

Chesser Resources as yet does not have a deposit ready to mine at Kestanelik. When we do have the reserves of gold defined we will most probably use a combination of Open Cut and Underground mining. All mining activities will be carried out in accordance with Turkish Law and best industry practise for preserving the environment and ensuring a safe and healthy operating environment.

Likely Processing Plant

The modern way of processing the gold ore would not be too different to that used by the ‘old timers’. Like the early miners all around the world the quartz rock will be crushed into smaller particles so that the gold can be released or liberated. Chesser will probably use a variety of crushing machines (jaw crusher, cone crusher) reducing the size of the quartz from rocks of up to 700 mm to around 4 mm.

The gold is likely to occur as very fine particles, sometimes attached to small pieces of sulphide minerals.

This fine gold will be recovered by passing the ore through a ball mill (a big rotating steel drum full of large steel balls) to reduce the particle size down to around 0.2 mm. After the ball mill, the ore, which would by now be a fine slurry, which would be fed into flotation cells. In this process the finely ground ore would be mixed in tanks with certain chemicals that selectively attract the wanted particles (fine gold and sulphides), whilst repelling the remaining barren rock. Air is blown through the tanks forming bubbles which rise up through the slurry and collect the gold particles and sulphide minerals. The bubbles, with the fine gold and sulphides attached, float to the surface of the tank where the bubbles or ‘froth’ is skimmed off and collected.

For every one tonne of fine grained slurry fed into the flotation circuit, around 50 kg of valuable material will be collected. This 50 kg of material is then leached with cyanide and other chemicals that dissolve the gold and enable it to be concentrated by adsorbing onto activated carbon. Subsequently, the gold is recovered from the carbon and by the process of electrowinning is recovered into semi-pure metal. The gold recovered from gravity, combined with that recovered by flotation and leaching, is smelted in a furnace and poured into gold bars (dore bars) on site. The dore bars are shipped off site for refining into pure gold (99.99%) by external refiners and are then sold to a bullion bank or financial institution that purchases and stores the gold bars. Cyanide used in the operation will largely be recovered for re-use in the processing plant. The cyanide which is not re-cycled will be rendered safe in the manner used widely in similar processing plants around the world.

With the utilisation of gravity, flotation and leaching, it is estimated that the process plant will recover more than 90% of the gold that enters the plant. The processing steps used at Chesser Resources are utilised at other gold processing plants throughout the world.

Chesser Resources 2007 to present

In 2007 Chesser Resources listed on the Australian Stock Exchange with ownership of leases predominantly in South Australia and New South Wales, Australia. In 2009, the Company negotiated to explore various exploration prospects in Turkey. A detailed account of the recent history of Chesser Resources is outlined in the Company History.