Silver47 Exploration (TSXV: AGA) has reported recoveries of 80% silver and 77% gold from metallurgical testing on the historic Belmont mine tailings at its Hughes project in Nevada, identifying conventional agitated cyanide leaching as the leading processing route.
The tailings host an inferred resource of 1.26 million tonnes grading 44 g/t silver and 0.3 g/t gold, containing 1.8 million ounces of silver and 11,000 ounces of gold, all situated on private land.
The testwork, conducted by Forte Analytical LLC, drew on 21 auger samples collected across the pile, twinning holes used in the 2025 resource estimate. The samples averaged 0.30 g/t gold and 36.8 g/t silver. Low sulphide sulphur and organic carbon levels suggest limited refractory or preg-robbing behaviour.
Those samples were blended into West and East master composites grading 0.27 g/t gold and 40.6 g/t silver, and 0.28 g/t gold and 45.4 g/t silver, respectively.
Grind size proved to be the key variable. Each composite was leached for 48 hours at three grind sizes, and taking the material from its as-received P80 of 106 microns down to 53 microns lifted gold extraction by roughly 18 percentage points and silver by 11 to 16 points. At the finest grind, the West composite returned 76.5% gold and 80.7% silver, while the East composite returned 77.3% gold and 80.0% silver.
Heap leaching was effectively ruled out for now. The tailings consist entirely of fines, and all six agglomeration tests failed to sustain permeability, with Forte concluding that substantial additional work would be needed to make that route viable.
“Showing extraction of 80% silver and 77% gold support further evaluation of the potential to reprocess the historic Belmont tailings using modern processing techniques,” said CEO Galen McNamara.
Follow up testing will target grind optimization below 53 microns, a trade-off study between carbon-in-leach and carbon-in-pulp circuits, carbon loading kinetics and reagent consumption at optimized conditions. Preliminary process engineering will run alongside it.
Silver47 last traded at $0.69 on the TSX Venture.
