Xtract Resources Plc announced the results from a study to determine the applicability of the ?TOMRA? method to pre-concentrate copper-gold mineralisation from the Racecourse Mineral Resource on the Bushranger Copper-Gold Project (?Project?) in central New South Wales, Australia. Bushranger Project TOMRA Pre-Concentration Study Following conclusion of the Phase 2 drilling programme on the Bushranger Copper-Gold Project in central New South Wales, Australia, and the finalisation of the upgraded Mineral Resource for the Racecourse Prospect, Xtract undertook pre-concentration test work on five composite samples from four drill holes.

Pre-concentration of mineralisation reduces the amount of material needed to be milled and placed through a flotation processing plan, which in turn can reduce pre-production capital and operating costs, with subsequent improvements in the overall economic performance of a project. Xtract engaged TOMRA Sorting Solutions (?TOMRA?) of Sydney, Australia, to undertake the pre-concentration test work on the five samples. Data was collecting using TOMRA's COM X-Ray Transmission (?XRT?) system.

The COM XRT system detects mineralised particles and then sorts the material into a pre-concentrated product and waste using amplified mechanical, hydraulic or pneumatic processes. The sorter is set up /trained using images taken of the samples. The images are then analysed using proprietary TOMRA image processing software.

Based upon the images sorting task specific algorithms are then developed and applied to sorting the mineralised material. For the training of the XRT sorter, samples were exposed to high energy X-rays, which project an image onto a sensor. The X-ray sensor signal depends on atomic density and material thickness and gives information on the inner composition of the particles.

By combining two energy levels simultaneously, it is possible to differentiate particles by their atomic densities and then separate material into a pre-concentrated product and waste. The primary sorting task was to produce a high-grade product fraction by way of sulphide classification and ejection in a single stage for each sample. All runs conducted for this set of test work were ?Dual-Energy?

XRT runs. This form of processing is designed to classify and eject relatively high-density sulphides away from the relatively low-density host-rock. All samples were screened to a 20-40mm particle size with the exception of Run 1 (BRDD21_010_Comp) which was run at 25-75mm.

All five samples processed with TOMRA achieved upgrades to the copper and gold content of the pre-concentrated ore, while rejecting significant volumes of waste material, with one higher grade sample (Run 4) being an outlier. Excluding the outlier, the average original grade of the four samples of copper-gold mineralisation was 0.23% Cu, while the average grade of the pre-concentrated mineralisation was 0.35% Cu, which shows a grade uplift of 52%. The average mass yield was 36%, meaning that 64% of the original mass of the sample was rejected into the waste product, suggesting that it will be possible to greatly reduce the volume of material needed to be processed through the milling and floatation circuits of a processing plant.

The TOMRA pre-concentration results do exhibit a significant amount of variability depending on the quantity of sulphides in the original composite drill core samples. The outlier was Run 4, which had the highest original feed grade material (0.52% Cu), achieved the highest sorted product grade (0.94% Cu), but in a very low mass (mass yield of 5.1%). This suggests that higher-grade material may not benefit from ore sorting to the same extent as the more typical deposit grades and would be more suited to direct processing.

The results overall show the potential of the TOMRA system to significantly increase the copper grade into a pre-concentrated product while rejecting potentially over 50% of the original rock mass into waste. The variability of the results indicate that more samples would need to be tested in order to determine an accurate average overall effect for TOMRA pre-concentration. The pre-concentration results are sufficiently positive for the effects of TOMRA pre-concentration to be incorporated into the overall financial model for the Bushranger Project.

Consequently, Xtract has engaged Optimal MiningSolutions (Pty) Ltd. of Australia (?Optimal Mining?)to incorporate the TOMRA results into an updated economic model for the overall Bushranger Project.