North of 60 Mining News - The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

Solitario Zinc Corp. Aug. 31 said it is undertaking metallurgical testing to determine the potential of improved silver recoveries from the zinc deposits at its recently acquired Lik project in Northwest Alaska.

Lik hosts two deposits separated by a fault - the near-surface Lik South and the deeper Lik North.

Lik South has an indicated resource of 16.85 million metric tons grading 8.1 percent zinc, 2.6 percent lead and 52.8 grams per metric ton silver; plus an inferred resource of 1.23 million metric tons grading 6.8 percent zinc, 2.1 percent lead and 35 g/t silver.

Solitario said that past metallurgical testing has focused on the recovery of zinc and lead with little work on silver recovery.

"We are excited about the potential to increase the recovery of a significant portion of this large inventory of silver contained in the high-grade Lik zinc deposit," said Solitario President and CEO Chris Herald. "The metallurgical program will involve a series of tests to determine if silver can be recovered either within a floatation product or by standard cyanidation methods. We believe there is only upside potential to this test program as the current economic modeling of the project estimated less than 5 percent payable silver recoveries."

A 2014 preliminary economic assessment for Lik outlines plans for developing an open-pit mine at Lik South that would produce 234,000 dry metric tons of zinc concentrate and 55,800 dry metric tons of lead concentrate annually over an initial nine-year mine life.

Lik North, not considered in the PEA, is a slightly higher grade deposit that would be mined later using underground methods if economics proved viable.

According to the most recent calculation, Lik North contains 5.18 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 9.65 percent zinc, 3.25 percent lead and 51 g/t silver.

-SHANE LASLEY