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    Larvotto Hillgrove tailings recoveries: design and rehab notes for mine engineers

    May 15, 2026|

    Reviewed by Joe Ashwell

    Larvotto Hillgrove tailings recoveries: design and rehab notes for mine engineers

    First reported on MINING.com

    30 Second Briefing

    Larvotto Resources’ initial flotation testwork on tailings storage facility 1 at the Hillgrove antimony-gold project in New South Wales reports 80–95% antimony and 40–75% gold recoveries from about 1.4 million tonnes of legacy tailings. The material, deposited over ~20 years from an antimony-focused plant, also carries significant gold and tungsten, with earlier work showing 90% tungsten recovery and a 16-fold grade upgrade into a saleable concentrate. Larvotto plans to run the same conventional flotation circuit in its upgraded plant from August 2026, coupling metal recovery with rehabilitation of a facility beside a 500-metre gorge.

    Technical Brief

    • Hillgrove tailings storage facility 1 holds ~1.4 Mt of legacy antimony-focused plant tailings.
    • TSF1 accumulated over ~20 years of operation, implying variable mineralogy and potential spatial grade domains.
    • Material contains significant gold and tungsten plus minor residual antimony, enabling multi-metal recovery from one circuit.
    • Larvotto plans to use the same conventional flotation flowsheet in the upgraded Hillgrove plant, simplifying integration.
    • Reprocessing TSF1 is intended to coincide with rehabilitation of a facility located beside a 500 m-deep gorge.
    • Managing director Ron Heeks emphasised that commercially meaningful grades remain in the tailings, supporting project economics.

    Our Take

    With earlier testwork showing about 90% tungsten recovery and a 16‑fold feed‑grade uplift, Hillgrove is emerging in our coverage as one of the few Australian polymetallic assets where antimony, gold, tungsten and copper can all be leveraged, giving Larvotto optionality to pivot between critical and precious metals depending on price cycles such as the recent LME copper pull‑back.

    Among recent antimony‑tagged pieces in our database, Hillgrove stands out because tailings reprocessing at TSF1 directly supports both “Projects” and “Sustainability” agendas, potentially easing permitting and ESG scrutiny in New South Wales compared with greenfield critical‑minerals developments.

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    Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.

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