Aureus Mining, an Africa-focused mining company, has reported that metallurgical testing on its new liberty ore has confirmed gold recovery.Highlights from the tests revealed potential gold recovery increased to more than 93%. Improved leach kinetics had allowed for halving the leach residence time and cyanide consumption had been reduced by one third. The group stated that optimisation test work had been completed on a 240kg representative bulk composite sample and six variability composite samples from the New Liberty deposit. David Reading stated: "These metallurgical results, which indicate significantly lower operating costs due to factors which include a shorter CIL (carbon in leach) residence time and lower consumption of reagents, further demonstrate the strong economics of New Liberty. "This is the first set of results for what is an on-going optimization programme, the full results of which will be available towards the end of the first quarter of this year. We are confident the results of this programme will further enhance the returns for all stakeholders on what will be Liberia's first commercial gold mine."MF