Colt Gets Tungsten And Gold Mining Licenses

Montreal-based explorer Colt Resources(GTP-V) tumbled to a new 52-week low after announcing it received two experimental mining licenses allowing it to advance its tungsten and gold exploration projects in Portugal, likely not the reaction the company was anticipating. The stock dropped nearly 16% to close Feb. 20 at a year low of 32.5¢. The next day it shares rebounded, gaining 17% to end at 38¢.    

Government officials granted the junior a 45-sq.-km experimental mining licence or EML for its Tabuaço tungsten project located some 300 km north-northeast from the country’s capital Lisbon and 100 km east-southeast of Porto.

The advanced-stage tungsten project sits near the city of Vila Real in Colt’s 100%-owned 218-sq.-km Armamar-Meda exploration concession, which partially surrounds its Penedono and Moimenta-Almendra concessions.

The EML covers the Tabuaço skarn-type tungsten deposits, including the Sao Pedro Aguias (SPA) and Aveleira tungsten resource areas, exploration targets on the SPA-Aveleira Gap, the Quinta-Tavora zone, and the East bank of the Tavora River.

The licence came after Colt spent nearly six years exploring the property, after staking it directly from the Portuguese government in December 2007.

Since then the junior — with big ambitions of bringing the country’s next gold and tungsten mines on stream in the next two to three years — carried out extensive outcrop sampling work followed by a diamond drilling program. To date, it has punched more than 100 holes or 11,400 metres at Tabuaço to help delineate a NI 43-101 mineral resource.  

The most recent estimate, published last October, show the SPA and Aveleira deposits host 1.49 million tonnes grading 0.55% tungsten trioxide (WO₃) in indicated, with another 1.23 million tonnes of 0.59%  WO₃  in inferred, using a 0.3% cutoff grade.  

While the Montreal-based entity aims to keep exploring the tungsten property, its experimental mining program will focus on the SPA deposit, where it will excavate an access adit and a vertical shaft to test the proposed mining method, evaluate the rock mechanical conditions, and recover a bulk sample to complete pilot ore concentration work.

Earlier this year, Colt provided a small representative sample of drill core to a Chinese metallurgical services provider to test recoveries. It reported flotation followed by acid leaching returned overall tungsten recoveries of 87%, as well as a final concentrate grading around 70% WO₃ from an ore sample containing 0.64% WO_3.

“These final metallurgical test results further demonstrate the potential to develop a successful tungsten mining operation at Tabuaço,” Nikolas Perrault, the company’s CEO, stated in a Jan. 30 release.

Colt intends to wrap up a preliminary economic assessment on the project by July, Perrault said, adding it is actively pursuing a joint-venture partner for Tabuaço so it could concentrate on its gold projects.

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