15 September 2020
Nighthawk Gold Corp. is pleased to provide results from the latest metallurgical testwork collected in 2019 from the Colomac Gold Project (“Colomac”), centrally located within the Company’s 100% owned Indin Lake Gold Property, Northwest Territories, Canada. Four (4) bulk drill core samples were submitted for SAGDesign, gravity concentration, flotation, bottle roll cyanide leaching, and column heap leach testing with results reported herein.
Results for all previous sampling programs (2016, 2017, and 2018) are also included in this release for reference (Table 1). Current test results are consistent with previous studies showing that Colomac rock performs exceptionally well in terms of its grind characteristics, gold recoveries, purity, and responsiveness to all standard gold recovery technologies. The Colomac test program is still at an early stage of evaluation, where it is reasonable to believe that further optimization should improve gold recovery in all process options. At this stage of the project, no further testing is required until a preferred process option has been decided upon. Once the preferred process option is defined, a comprehensive metallurgical study would be necessary to optimize process conditions.
Dr. Michael Byron, President & CEO commented, “We are extremely pleased with the metallurgical results to-date, which continue to substantiate the consistently limited variability of Colomac rock in terms of its hardness and response to standard mineral processing studies. Heap leach testing, including bottle roll and column tests, are still at a preliminary stage; however, results show a favourable response to the deposit's heap leach potential. We now have a total of ten bottle roll and nine column leach tests that collectively shed considerable insight for the ongoing assessment of the deposit's heap leach and primary processing potential.”
“Four metallurgical test programs have now been completed to-date on 12 Colomac bulk samples. Gold recoveries from all studies conducted to date, including the different process routes are summarized in Table 3 and confirm the host rock’s remarkably uniform responses to all process options.”