Swick introduces Orexplore mineral scanning tech at gold project

Mining News - Swick Mining Services has secured the first commercial agreement for the company’s Orexplore mineral scanning technology.
The agreement, between Orexplore Australia and Saturn Metals, will see core from the Apollo Hill gold project scanned by the patented GeoCore X10 core scanning machine and technology.
Apollo Hill comprises almost 1000km 2 of ground near Leonora in Western Australia’s Goldfields region. The first batch of 30m of core has already been received and processed.
Swick managing director Kent Swick said the commercial agreement, although small in value, was a major milestone for the Orexplore technology.
“Orexplore was developed over a seven-year period in Sweden and has the potential to disrupt the multi-billion dollar a year minerals analysis industry by providing real-time, non-destructive assay and tomography results, using whole of core data that is a vast improvement on the multiple weeks delay currently used in destructive chemical testing,” Kent Swick said.
The GeoCore X10 core scanning machine uses a patented AXM (attenuation and x-ray fluorescence combined measurement) technique. The data it generates enhances the identification and understanding of key features within the entire core, including: geochemical composition and mineralogy; 3D structures; texture, fabric and grain size; density; and control and mineralisation.
Saturn managing director Ian Bamborough said the unusually high number of gold indications seen in the AHRCD0016 core so far was pleasing.
“The GeoCore X10 scan has provided us with additional confidence in our interpretations, some timely geological targeting information for the start of our upcoming RC program and a great data set for the deposits apparently simple metallurgical development,” Bamborough said.
Orexplore laboratory services agreements are based on recurring three-month terms whereby clients provide core at their discretion when available.
Kent Swick said there had been good levels of interest for the technology across a wide spectrum of potential clients who trialled the product since it was introduced.
“Many of those are now deciding how to use the technology in their current work flows and we are confident a number of proposals will be converted into laboratory scanning agreements soon,” Kent Swick said.