HEAP LEACH TESTING BOOSTS RECOVERY AT APOLLO HILL

Saturn Metals reports 86% gold recovery without milling, confirming low-cost development potential

Saturn Metals Limited (ASX:STN) has announced a significant uplift in gold recovery from recent metallurgical test work at its 100%-owned Apollo Hill Gold Project in Western Australia, achieving standout results from heap leach testing on near-surface oxide and transitional ore types.

The column leach tests delivered an average gold recovery of 86% over 95 days, substantially surpassing the company’s earlier expectations. These findings reinforce the viability of bulk tonnage gold extraction using low-cost heap leach methods—a processing route responsible for nearly half of global gold production.

KEY RESULTS INCLUDE:

86% average gold recovery achieved in 95 days from oxide and transitional samples.
Favourable leach kinetics with 86% of the total gold recovery (75% average recovery) occurring in just ~30 days.
Gold recovery materially higher than used in the Apollo Hill PEA, indicating potential upside in the Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS).
Excellent results across the full grade range (0.18g/t Au to 0.84g/t Au), validating heap leach amenability across Apollo Hill mineralisation.
Low reagent use: only 0.5kg/t cyanide, negligible lime, and 4.3kg/t cement required.
Outstanding percolation test results: standard agglomeration and percolation tests returned values ~6 times above the minimum recommended benchmark.

Saturn Managing Director Ian Bamborough said:

These impressive and consistently high gold recovery results – achieved from a representative sample set of Apollo Hill’s at and near-surface materials, usually extracted early in any mining schedule – deliver a positive impact on the economics of the project, and provide further evidence that simple, cost-effective heap leach processing is an excellent development pathway for Apollo Hill.

The metallurgy of Apollo Hill is a clear competitive advantage. It provides a significant economic head start for the deposit, which will ultimately help us to leverage its substantial economies of scale and unlock efficiencies. This positive new data will be used as the Company progresses its studies towards production.