Abu Marawat Results Put Egypt Back on the Global Gold Map
Aton Mining Inc. has announced new and expanded results from its metallurgical testing programme on the polymetallic ores of the Abu Marawat project, marking a significant step forward in evaluating the project’s technical and economic viability.
Aton Reveals Promising Results from Abu Marawat
The project is located in Egypt’s Eastern Desert within a concession fully owned by the company.
The company stated that the testwork programme covered nine composite samples representing the main mineralisation styles at Abu Marawat, including oxide, transitional and sulphide ores.
These samples were prepared from selected diamond drill core intervals and reverse circulation drill chips.
Results showed that the ores display medium to hard grinding characteristics, with abrasion behaviour ranging from slightly to moderately abrasive, indicating suitability for conventional and well-established mineral processing routes.
Abu Marawat Unlocks Its Treasures
Whole-ore cyanide leaching tests delivered strong gold recovery rates, ranging from around 70% to more than 90%, while silver recoveries showed greater variability.
The results demonstrated that sulphide and transitional ores generally achieved the highest recovery efficiencies, with cyanide and lime consumption varying according to ore type.
Overall, the findings confirm that gold mineralisation at Abu Marawat is broadly amenable to conventional cyanide leaching.
In flotation testing, copper rougher flotation achieved recovery rates of between 67% and 92%, producing copper concentrates with variable grades and containing meaningful amounts of gold and silver.
Several samples, particularly from transitional vein systems and oxide zones, demonstrated the potential to produce high-quality copper concentrates with significant precious metal credits.
Subsequent cleaner flotation stages produced high-grade copper concentrates, although this came at the cost of reduced overall recoveries.
Despite this, silver continued to report strongly to the copper concentrates, maintaining high grades and enhancing the overall economic value of the final products.
Zinc depression, however, proved technically challenging in some transitional ore types, while other samples showed improved responses, highlighting the need for further optimisation of the processing flowsheet.
The test programme also succeeded in producing marketable copper and zinc concentrates from sulphide ore samples, achieving high concentrate grades and solid recovery levels.
In addition, leaching of flotation tailings generated substantial incremental recoveries of both gold and silver, further improving the total metal yield from the ore.
SART testing demonstrated high efficiency in precipitating dissolved base metals and regenerating cyanide, with excellent removal of copper, zinc and silver from solution.
This opens the door to improved operating economics and reduced reagent consumption, although gold recovery in this stage remained limited due to the nature of the chemical reactions involved.
According to the company, the overall test results clearly support the adoption of a combined flotation and leaching processing route to maximise recoveries of gold, silver, copper and zinc, while benefiting from effective cyanide recovery and base metal removal technologies.
This approach significantly strengthens the case for advancing the project toward commercial development.
Commenting on the results, the company’s CEO said that the preliminary metallurgical findings are highly encouraging and confirm that Abu Marawat ores, particularly the oxide and transitional material, can be processed economically using conventional methods to produce saleable copper concentrates with valuable gold and silver credits, as well as doré from downstream processing circuits.
He added that sulphide ores can be treated through sequential flotation to generate copper and zinc concentrates containing robust precious metal values.
The CEO also noted that the latest phase of drilling at Abu Marawat has been completed, and preparations are underway to update the mineral resource estimate.
This work is intended to support the integration of the Abu Marawat and Semna deposits into a single exploitation lease, reflecting the company’s strategy to accelerate development and transform its discoveries into a fully integrated mining project.
The Abu Marawat gold-silver-copper-zinc project is located approximately 35 kilometres northeast of the Hamama West area and close to the Semna mine project.
It comprises a system of roughly parallel mineralised veins that have been traced over considerable distances through drilling and geological studies.
These characteristics reinforce Abu Marawat’s position as one of the most promising emerging mining projects in Egypt’s Eastern Desert and underline its potential role in restoring Egypt’s standing on the global gold map.
