Impact Minerals Limited's Blackridge gold project hopes to undertake a trial mining project 25 kilometres north of Clermont and is finalising a Plan of Operations to be submitted to the Queensland Department of Natural Resources for approval, with mining to commence as soon as practicable afterwards.
Results of the trial would determine the site's potential as a larger open pit gold mine.
A private contractor, Queensland-based Nimble Resources Pty Ltd has signed an agreement with Impact to mine 1.6 million tonnes and will carry all costs for mining, processing and rehabilitation.
In return Impact has financially de-risked the next significant stage of exploration and development of Blackridge and will also benefit from the receipt of a sliding scale Net Smelter Royalty of up to 15 per cent, depending on the average monthly grade of gold mined.
According to Impact Minerals Limited managing director Mike Jones, the agreement was a very positive step forward for the project.
"We know that the best way to determine grade in coarse gold deposits such as Blackridge is to simply start mining," he said.
"This is inherently very high risk and so this agreement gives Impact a very low risk entry to mining by trial mining of only a modest part of the mineralised area which extends over at least 1500 metres along trend.
"In addition, Impact, under the royalty payment provisions, will receive at least a modest cash flow from the trial".
The gold fields in the region produced about 185,000 ounces of gold from 1879 to the early 1900s from surface down to depths of about 70 metres in small shafts and related underground workings.
Further discoveries were made in the Clermont region in the 1930s and total production from conglomerates in the region is estimated by the Geological Survey of Queensland to be more than 300,000 ounces of gold.
The trial proposal follows recent recognition of large volumes of free-digging oxide ore with exceptional gold recoveries of more than 95pc by wet gravity processing methods in recent bulk sampling programs.
The bulk sampling was done in conjunction with Nimble, who, encouraged by the results, subsequently approached Impact to initiate the trial mining program.
The company has specialist skills and equipment in both wet and in particular dry gravity gold processing technologies and believes that a large portion of the oxide material at Blackridge may potentially be dry processed.
Dr Jones said that having worked with Nimble Resources for the past 18 months, his company had established that they were capable operators, who they looked forward to working with.
"The use of their dry processing technology in the first instance also significantly decreases the environmental risk and the large water requirements for a wet processing plant," he said. "Impact will also continue to assess other processing alternatives for other material types which are key targets for the larger scale potential at Blackridge."
It is possible but not guaranteed that mining could commence before the end of the year.
The mining process, being dry, is only operable outside of the wet season and this will reduce the operating time during the year.