BonTerra Resources now has five rigs on site

BonTerra Resources (BTR.V) is in the middle of its 70,000 meter drill program at the Gladiator deposit and five drill rigs are currently active on the project site. These five rigs will be focusing on drilling the Gladiator deposit out with a 50 meter hole spacing for a total program size of 25,000 meters, whilst BonTerra is also working on a 5,000 meter regional exploration program to define new gold targets.

At the same time, BonTerra continues to work on the metallurgical side of the deposit. As you might remember from our original report (CLICK HERE), no metallurgical recovery rates have been disclosed so far. And as this is an important part of putting a resource and mine plan together, the market is definitely anxiously awaiting to see the expected recovery rates. Above 90% would be good, above 95% would be excellent (for instance, Metanor Resources (MTO.V) consistently obtains a recovery rate of 96.7% in its Bachelor Lake mill, so expecting 95% might nog be unreasonable for the Gladiator deposit).

The company has also announced the appointment of Peter Ball as Vice President of Operations. Ball used to be the CEO of Redstar Gold (RGC.V) where he oversaw the company's attempts to define an economic resource at the Alaskan Unga Island, but Ball quit his CEO role a few weeks ago. As a mining engineer with capital markets experience, he seems to be a good fit for a company slowly moving towards developing a mine.

The results of the metallurgical test work will be out in Q2, the resource estimate in the second half of the year.