Gold assay tech piques green energy intrigue

A South Australian mining tech firm revolutionising the centuries-old method of assaying gold is working to bed down its foothold in the global gold industry.

But it wasn’t photon assaying’s proven benefits for the precious metal investors were most interested in during a site visit to Chrysos Corporation’s machines housed at Intertek’s global minerals headquarters in Kenwick on Tuesday.

Instead, the technology’s use for assaying of other resources such as base metals, rare earths, and uranium was the question on several financiers’ lips following a presentation by Chrysos chief executive Dirk Treasure.

Already available for gold, silver, and copper, other minerals Chrysos is looking at for the PhotonAssay include uranium, which Mr Treasure said could be “turned on next week” if demand flowed.

“We already measure uranium in the background, we simply don't actually provide the uranium grade to the customer,” he said.

“But as uranium starts heating up around the world there is an ability there to start to broaden.

“We still want to make sure that we focus on gold miners, particularly when it comes to on site deployments, but we can broaden the offer for laboratories.

“It is effectively a software upgrade.”

Photon assaying was developed by the CSIRO using high-powered x-rays to detect gold and commercialised by Chrysos Corporation in 2016.

It offers a significantly shorter turnaround, increased accuracy, and health and safety benefits compared to traditional fire assays.

South African-headquartered Gold Fields has been an early up-taker of the technology and plans to have samples from all four of its WA sites processed using photon assay by the end of the year.

Last year Canadian giant Barrick Gold signed a deal to roll out the PhotonAssay to three Nevada goldmines.

That deal followed Barrick’s use of the technology in Africa and could see 10 more units deployed by 2025.

With that move Chrysos Corporation now has a launch pad on four continents – north America, Australia, Africa, and Europe, and has 27 of its assaying machines already operating.

Mr Treasure said Chrysos was working to have its foreign interests run autonomously.

“A global business is tricky to do from anywhere,” he said.

“It comes down to a question of time zones, and how you manage the different parts of a business around the world, and I think the only way to do that is by getting good people in those locations that can operate autonomously.

“Someone in Africa needs to be empowered to make a decision, rather than needing to pick up the phone, talk to Australia and kind of wait for us to make the decision for them.”

Mr Treasure said having global goldminers and laboratories using photon assays had de-risked the platform for other users.

Chrysos technical specialist Naomi Potter said ESG was a core reason companies were turning to the PhotonAssay.

“Being able to work for a company that is both creating a… better technology than what's currently in the market, as well as also hitting those sustainability goals and improving the environment is always a big win,” she said.