Baru Gold Corp. to announce it has substantially completed clearing of the land and commenced earthworks on the heap leach pad for the Sangihe gold project. Initial capacity of the heap operation has been set at 100,000 tonnes. The heap leach pad measures 127 by 64 meters. There are currently more than 60 labourers working on the construction project and 90% are local hires from Sangihe Island. This number will significantly increase once production commences. All equipment required for construction will be contracted on the island. Materials that are not available locally will be sourced from Manado which is in the same province as Sangihe. The construction of
the heap leach facility does not require the removal or relocation of any residences. Baru Gold, along with its contractors, have cleared the principal production area, including grubbing and are in the process of rough grading to plan. The next focus will be to construct pond berms and compacting to engineering specifications in preparation for installation of the leach pad liner and processing facility installation. Heap leaching is an industrial mining process used to extract precious metals and other compounds from ore using a series of chemical reactions that absorb specific minerals and re-separate them after their division from other earth materials. A form of lower cost
methods of mining, heap leach mining differs in that it places ore on a liner, then adds the chemicals via drip systems to the ore, whereas in situ mining lacks these liners and pulls pregnant solution up to obtain the minerals. Heap leaching is widely used in modern large- scale mining operations as it produces the desired concentrates at a lower cost compared to conventional processing methods such as flotation, agitation, and vat leaching.