True North Gems Inc. is pleased to announce that its subsidiary, True North Gems Greenland A/S, has completed the procurement of the processing plant equipment (gemstone recovery circuit) for the Aappaluttoq ruby and pink sapphire mine in SW Greenland.
The majority of the processing equipment is currently in Aalborg in northern Denmark; from there it will be shipped to Nuuk, Greenland in the coming weeks. Barge repositioning of the equipment to the mine-site will take place later in November once construction of the processing plant building is completed by LNS-Greenland.
"The Aappaluttoq processing plant is designed to be one of the most advanced coloured gemstone recovery circuits in the World." Stated Nicholas Houghton, President and CEO of True North Gems Inc. "True North was responsible for the design and acquisition of the processing plant as initially agreed with our joint-venture partner LNS-Greenland. With the achievement of this significant project milestone we are pleased to see the contributions by both partners combining so successfully."
The processing plant was engineered, designed, and procured under the supervision of Novus Technical Services of Vancouver, BC, and several other international consultants. After extensive ore test-work the front end of the plant comprises primary jaw crushing followed by secondary cone crushing; the secondary crusher is preceded by a large stone recovery circuit to prevent oversized rough gemstone material from being compromised.
The middle section of the plant first removes fine material and mica in an ore scrubber and screen. The scrubbed ore is then separated into a low and high specific gravity fraction through a conventional ferrosilicon Dense Medium Separation (DMS) plant. Extensive metallurgical test-work has shown a good recovery of corundum bearing rock reporting to the high specific gravity fraction using standard DMS plant operating parameters.
The back-end of the plant comprises treatment of the DMS concentrates through an infrared dryer, sizing screen and an optical sorter. The optical sorting equipment is calibrated to recognize shades of pink through red colour of the corundum and extract that material using air-jets; this creates a corundum bearing super-concentrate that is ready to be shipped to the company's rough handling facility in Nuuk. The company's proprietary inventory and chain-of-custody software RubyTrack™ will follow each daily ore-block through the plant, enabling True North to reconcile mine grade information and track each stone batch from the mine through mineral processing, grading, and sales.
True North Gems is also pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Mike Schmidt as Processing Plant Manager. Mr. Schmidt has extensive experience constructing, calibrating and operating specialized process circuits for diamonds and gemstones in Canada and Southern Africa. He assisted in the design of the Aappaluttoq processing plant while working as a consultant for Novus Technical Services, and subsequently has agreed to work with the True North Gems team as we move into production.
Bent Olsvig-Jensen, Managing Director TNGG, commented: "We are pleased that Mike elected to bring his extensive experience to Greenland to oversee gemstone recovery. His skills will be crucial; not only for construction and calibration of the plant, but also for the training of our local workforce in process plant operations- a role that few Greenlanders have yet to experience."
Source: http://www.truenorthgems.com/