Phoenix Copper Ltd. announce the results of its metallurgical testing of Empire Mine open pit oxide material. The test work, completed by Resource Development Inc/Forte Dynamics of Wheat Ridge, Colorado ('Forte'), has further demonstrated the robust copper, gold, and silver recoveries possible at Empire using non-cyanide leaching technologies. Forte has completed test work consisting of crushing, grinding, flotation, and both sulphuric acid and ammonium thiosulfate leaching on drill core composites collected from the 2022 Empire Mine metallurgical core drilling programme.

While testing the use of ATS as a prospective sole reagent on material representative of the Empire Mine deposit, Forte also tested and developed flow sheets for flotation alone, as well as the hybrid processes of flotation followed by sulphuric acid leaching and flotation followed by ATS leaching to recover gold, silver, and copper. The results of the test work to date have identified two potential processes which merit further optimisation, namely flotation plus ATS and flotation plus sulphuric acid leach. Both of the proposed leach circuits would be confined in agitated tanks.