Manitoba Gold Explorer Reports Recovery Rates Above 93% in New Metallurgical Tests

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A Manitoba gold developer has delivered a fresh set of metallurgical results that could help shape how two of its key deposits fit into a future mining operation. 1911 Gold Corporation reported total gold recovery averaging 93.7% from material at its True North Gold Project and a preliminary recovery of 96.3% from Ogama-Rockland, another deposit within its Rice Lake property in southeastern Manitoba.

The results are significant because they test more than how much gold is present in the rock. They examine how effectively that gold can actually be recovered using a processing route built around gravity concentration, flotation, regrinding and cyanide leaching. With the True North mill being recommissioned for planned test-mining work, the new data gives 1911 Gold a more detailed picture of how mineralized material could behave inside an existing processing facility.

True North Tests Return 93.7% Overall Gold Recovery

The True North work was conducted on a 130-kilogram sample collected underground from the L10 Zone on Level 16, roughly 720 metres below surface. The composite had a measured head grade of 1.82 grams of gold per tonne and was tested by ALS Canada’s metallurgy operation in Kamloops, British Columbia. Under processing conditions intended to resemble those previously used at the True North mill, total gold recovery averaged 93.7%. That number is notable because it was achieved on material grading below the 2.75 g/t proposed cut-off grade used in the project’s recent preliminary economic assessment.

The tests also showed that a substantial portion of the metal could be separated early in the process. Gravity concentration recovered an average of 51% of the gold, while another 44.5% reported to the rougher flotation concentrate. After that concentrate was reground and leached, gold extraction from the flotation concentrate averaged about 95.5% in the company’s headline results. Optimal leaching occurred within roughly 24 to 48 hours, and 1911 Gold characterized reagent consumption as moderate to low. Those characteristics provide useful information for future operating trials, although laboratory performance still has to be demonstrated consistently with larger and more variable volumes of mined material.

Ogama-Rockland Delivers an Even Higher Preliminary Recovery

The result from Ogama-Rockland was stronger still. A 20.5-kilogram composite representing 21.9 metres of quartered drill core was assembled from the company’s recent drilling program. Half-core assays suggested an estimated head grade of 4.94 g/t gold, while the metallurgical test calculated a head grade of 4.65 g/t. Under the tested gravity-flotation-regrind-leach route, total recovery reached 96.3%. Gravity concentration alone captured 82% of the gold, a particularly high share of the contained metal before the material moved through the later stages of processing.

The remaining circuit also performed strongly in the preliminary test. About 97.7% of the gold contained in the flotation concentrate was extracted by leaching after the concentrate was reground to a nominal 21 microns. The gravity and flotation tail contained 0.17 g/t gold, and the flotation tail itself was not subsequently leached. The concentrate required a 72-hour leach period, longer than the optimum range reported for True North. Importantly, only one approximately two-kilogram split of the Ogama-Rockland composite went through the complete recovery flowsheet, making the 96.3% result encouraging but still an early-stage indication rather than a definitive project-wide recovery rate.

High Gravity Recovery Could Simplify Part of the Processing Job

The amount of gold captured by gravity is one of the more interesting details in the new work. Gravity concentration takes advantage of gold’s high density to separate liberated particles relatively early in a processing circuit. Modern centrifugal systems, including Knelson-type concentrators such as the equipment used in the True North tests, are widely employed alongside flotation and cyanidation. Academic reviews of gold processing note that gravity is rarely the only recovery method, but it can remove a meaningful share of free gold before the remaining material requires more intensive treatment.

That context makes the 51% average gravity recovery at True North and 82% result at Ogama-Rockland particularly relevant. At True North, individual tests recovered more than 60% of the feed gold by gravity under some grind conditions. Ogama-Rockland’s preliminary result suggests an even larger proportion of its tested gold was readily gravity recoverable. In practical terms, early recovery can reduce the amount of gold that must be chased through subsequent stages. It does not make flotation or leaching unnecessary, however. The new tests demonstrate exactly that point: the final recovery percentages depended on combining gravity separation with flotation, fine regrinding and cyanide leaching rather than relying on a single technique.

Test Work Identifies Areas Where the Mill Could Be Fine-Tuned

Beyond the headline recovery percentages, 1911 Gold tested how changes in grind size, reagent levels and concentrate treatment affected performance. At True North, regrinding the flotation concentrate produced one of the clearest improvements. Across the tests summarized by the company, adding a regrind stage improved total gold recovery by an average of about five percentage points. At a 112-micron primary grind, the reported improvement was eight percentage points, moving from 85.6% without concentrate regrinding to 93.6% when a regrind stage was included.

The work also raised a potentially important trade-off involving how finely the mill needs to grind the incoming material. True North historically operated with a primary grind near 75 microns, while much of the recent testing examined coarser 87- and 112-micron conditions. Coarser grinding can potentially affect energy use and throughput, but the company says further trade-off work is needed before drawing an operating conclusion. A Bond Ball Mill Work Index of 14.1 kWh per tonne placed the tested True North material at the lower end of the medium-hardness range. Environmental testing performed alongside the metallurgy also found no acid-generating potential or measurable deleterious-metal leaching in the tested composite.

The Existing True North Mill Gives the Results Added Importance

For an early-stage deposit without infrastructure, a strong metallurgical result can still leave years of engineering questions ahead. True North is different because a processing complex already exists at the property. On August 10, 1911 Gold completed a commissioning run of the primary ball mill after installing new liners, lifters and a new gear-lubrication system. The work is part of preparations for the company’s planned test-mining and milling activities, which are intended to generate operational data rather than relying only on laboratory-scale assumptions.

That makes the 93.7% laboratory recovery especially useful as a reference point. The company’s February 2026 preliminary economic assessment used a 93.5% average life-of-mine recovery assumption, so the new test is broadly consistent with that processing assumption. There is an important regulatory caveat. In July, after a review by the British Columbia Securities Commission, 1911 Gold corrected earlier language surrounding the PEA and emphasized that the study is preliminary, includes inferred mineral resources and does not establish mineral reserves or a production decision. The new metallurgy strengthens the technical information available to the company, but it does not remove those economic and geological uncertainties.

Ogama-Rockland Is Becoming More Important to the District Strategy

The metallurgical result arrived only days after a major resource update at Ogama-Rockland. On August 11, 1911 Gold reported an inferred underground mineral resource of approximately 3.314 million tonnes grading 6.68 g/t gold, containing about 712,000 ounces. That compares with the previous 2013 estimate of 337,000 contained ounces at 8.17 g/t. The updated resource remains entirely in the inferred category, meaning geological confidence is not yet sufficient to classify it as indicated or measured, and mineral resources are not mineral reserves with demonstrated economic viability.

Ogama-Rockland nevertheless brings an unusual combination of history and proximity. The deposit sits about 45 kilometres by road southeast of True North and consists of the historical Ogama and Rockland mines, which collectively produced roughly 45,000 ounces of gold between 1948 and 1951 at an average reported grade of 11.25 g/t. Manitoba Geological Survey work identifies the broader Rice Lake greenstone belt as one of the province’s important gold districts, with numerous deposits and more than 200 documented gold occurrences in historical geological work. If additional metallurgy confirms that Ogama-Rockland material can consistently be processed at True North, the deposit could become increasingly relevant to 1911 Gold’s centralized-mill strategy.

Strong Recovery Numbers Still Need to Survive Larger-Scale Testing

The most important caution around the new results is sample scale. Laboratory metallurgical testing is designed to establish how selected material responds under controlled conditions, but gold deposits are rarely uniform from one end to the other. Mineralogy, sulphide content, grain size, gold distribution and rock hardness can change across different veins and geological units. Gold-processing research consistently emphasizes that flowsheet selection is deposit-specific, which is why variability testing normally becomes increasingly important as a project advances.

1911 Gold has already acknowledged that more work is required. True North needs additional operating trade-off studies, while Ogama-Rockland requires testing across a broader range of host rocks and head grades, along with hardness, comminution, mineralogical and environmental characterization. The reported total recovery calculations also assume that all gold reporting to the gravity concentrate is ultimately recoverable, an assumption that should be considered when interpreting the headline percentages. Planned bulk sampling and test mining at True North provide the next opportunity to compare laboratory expectations with material handled at much greater scale. For now, 93.7% and 96.3% are positive technical signals—valuable ones, but still part of a larger process of demonstrating repeatable recovery, mineability and economic viability.

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