Great Western Mining Corporation (AIM:GWMO), the strategic minerals explorer, said initial metallurgical test work at its Defender Tungsten Project in Nevada has confirmed the ore's amenability to conventional flotation processing.
The results matter because they de-risk the processing route for a project still at an early technical stage.
Eriez Flotation Division, commissioned in May, ran sequential sulphide and scheelite flotation tests on a 750kg representative bulk sample drawn from roughly a kilometre of strike spanning the Defender, Dough God and Pine Crow mines.
The sample carried a homogenised head grade of 0.35% WO₃.
A first-stage sulphide pre-float removed contaminants into a float stream of just 3.97% of total mass, retaining 99.46% of the tungsten at the original grade.
The primary flotation stage then recovered 92.98% of the remaining tungsten into a rougher concentrate grading 7.21% WO₃, pulling only 4.55% of total mass.
Great Western said the recovery and grade uplift compare favourably with rougher test work at other regional skarn-hosted tungsten projects.
"We have established a remarkably clean, low-volume rougher concentrate that serves as the perfect springboard for our next phase of metallurgical test work," the company said.
The concentrate will now feed cleaner circuit optimisation tests aimed at pushing the grade towards marketable product specifications, with Eriez also assessing whether a mild regrind stage is needed to improve mineral liberation without over-grinding the scheelite.
News Intelligence what this means for the company
Great Western's bench-scale flotation tests on Defender ore achieved 92.98% tungsten recovery into a 7.21% WO₃ concentrate—a 20-fold grade uplift from the 0.35% starting material—using conventional flotation, de-risking the processing route for the Nevada project. The company is now moving to cleaner circuit optimisation to push the concentrate toward marketable specifications, advancing toward a maiden Mineral Resource Estimate targeted for end-2026.
Metallurgical de-risking on a standard, low-cost processing route strengthens the technical foundation for Defender ahead of the resource estimate. The next phase—cleaner circuit work and regrind optimisation—will determine whether the concentrate can reach commercial product grade without material additional cost.
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