FRITSCH's Compact Pre-Crusher for Hard and Brittle Materials

In the last six months the company completed a feasibility study for the project, negotiated a new mining licence, finalized a new geological model, changed the mine development plan to incorporate new information from the model, planned a 40,000-metre drill campaign for 2013 and calculated a new resource estimate.Now the resource estimate is out, and the company is increasing the contained gold at the project only slightly, while it boosts the average resource grade.The near-surface, heap-leachable deposits at Amulsar contain 81.1 million measured-and-indicated tonnes grading 0.95 gram gold per tonne for 2.48 million oz. gold, plus 70.1 million inferred tonnes averaging 0.82 gram gold for an additional 1.85 million oz. gold. These numbers use a cut-off grade of 0.3 gram gold. Increasing the cut-off to 0.4 gram gold changes the measured-and-indicated count to 61.6 million tonnes grading 1.14 grams gold, and puts the inferred resource at 49.9 million tonnes averaging 1.02 grams gold.The new estimate adds only a few hundred thousand ounces to the total contained gold count at Amulsar, but it increases the average gold grade by 16% in  the measured-and-indicated categories, and by 11% in the inferred category, using 0.4-gram-gold cutoff numbers.The grade improvements are made possible in part by the new 3-D geological model, which helps Lydian better understand Amulsar's local lithology, alteration and structural controls.

There are four deposits at the project: Tigranes; Artavasdes and Arshak, which form a continuous northwest-striking zone of mineralization; and Erato sitting 1 km north. Mineralization remains open to the north, east and to depth at Erato, Tigranes and Artavasdes, while Arshak remains open along strike to the southeast.Lydian plans to test the potential to grow Amulsar's deposits laterally, but the more exciting direction for growth is at depth.
New Reasons to Change Light Bulbs. The geological model suggests that barren rock previously thought to define the lower limit of mineralization could be, in many places, just a slice of the older, barren volcanic unit that is interwoven with the younger, gold-bearing volcanic unit at Amulsar. Recent drill holes extending through barren-rock slices have encountered mineralization below, which shows potential to expand mineralization at depth.To test that theory, while also testing for lateral expansion and probing new induced polarization targets, Lydian plans to complete 40,000 metres of drilling at Amulsar in 2013. In 2012 the project saw only 20,000 metres of drilling, which brought total drilling at the site - since Lydian discovered gold there in 2006 - to almost 110,000 metres.