Summary

Mine Type	Underground
Status	Care and Maintenance
Commodities	Gold Silver
Mining Method	Longhole stoping
Backfill type	...
Production Start	...
Snapshot	The Cononish is a high-grade underground mining operation with a central processing plant producing gold concentrate for off-take and gold doré for the Scottish Jewellery industry. The Scotgold Resources achieved commercial production on 30 June 2022. However, in July 2023 Scotgold announced that it was undertaking a third-party review of the mine plan, and as a result, in September 2023 announced that additional finance was required to deliver this plan. At the end of September 2023, advised that mining and production ceased. A care and maintenance programme has been put in place. On 16 October, the Company announced that it was in advanced financing discussions with a strategic investor. Unfortunately, these discussions have not resulted in an investment. Therefore, the directors, having assessed the options open to them, are considering the appointment of Administrators. Trading in the Scotgold's shares on AIM suspended with effect from 11 September 2023.

Deposit type

• Vein / narrow vein

Summary:

The Cononish deposit is hosted in a meta-sedimentary sequence of schists, pelites, quartzites, psammites and calcareous rocks of the Appin and Argyll Groups belonging to the Dalradian Supergroup.

The gold and silver mineralisation occurs within a steeply-dipping quartz vein which is up to 8.3m wide and has an average width of about 1.8m.

The vein system was emplaced during the late to post-tectonic late Silurian to early Devonian episode of granitoid intrusion in the Grampian Highlands. It shows both brittle and ductile style deformation and completely postdates metamorphism and associated Caledonian foliations. Quartz veining is associated with the Tyndrum Fault, one of a set of northeast southwest trending, left lateral, faults characterizing the Scottish Highlands.

Gold occurs as electrum (a natural gold / silver alloy) and some minor amounts of native (pure) gold; silver occurs additionally as minor tellurides. The gold/electrum is fine-grained, generally <100 µm in size. Visible gold up to 1,000 µm to 2,000 µm in size is rare. Assay data suggests that gold and silver is spatially associated with sulphides in the quartz vein. The main sulphide is pyrite, but galena, chalcopyrite and sphalerite occur in small amounts.

Although the vein outcrops on surface in limited areas, this will not be exposed by mining and little weathering and no supergene alteration has been encountered to date.

Mining Methods

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Comminution

Crushers and Mills

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Processing

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Commodity Production

Commodity	Product	Units	2023	2022	2021	Avg. Annual (Projected)	LOM (Projected)
Gold	Metal in conc./ doré	oz	....	....	....
Silver	Metal in conc./ doré	oz		....

Operational metrics

Metrics	2022
Ore tonnes mined	....
Tonnes milled	....

Personnel

Job Title	Name	Profile	Ref. Date
.......................	.......................		Aug 23, 2024
.......................	.......................		Aug 28, 2024