Siren Gold Limited provided an update on the current status of metallurgical testwork and progress to date in advancing a conceptual processing plant study for the Reefton Gold Project, in the South Island of New Zealand. Siren has engaged GR Engineering Services Limited (GRES) to complete a scoping study to examine the possibility of establishing a processing facility at the Company's Reefton Gold project located on the South Island of New Zealand. The study is based on metallurgical testwork and the construction of a centrally located multipurpose gold processing facility, examining the likely optimum treatment route and plant locations.

The study is based on the potential for the treating of various mineralisation from Alexander River and Big River, as well as potentially treating material from other historical mines on the Reefton Goldfield. This work has been extended to allow for a detailed site visit and additional works, including a review of the potential for processing of mineralisation from the recently acquired Sams Creek Project, as well as further test work to be conducted on stibnite related gold and antimony recovery from the various Reefton projects. Study works have been successful to date, are progressing steadily and will be ongoing over the coming months.

Western New Zealand was originally part of Gondwana and lay adjacent to eastern Australia until around 80 Ma ago. The NW of the South Island of New Zealand comprises an area of predominantly early Paleozoic rocks in broad northerly trending belts, which terminate at the Alpine Fault. The Paleozoic sequence is divided into the Buller Terrane, Takaka Central and Takaka Eastern Belts.

These belts are interpreted to correspond with the Western, Central and Eastern belts of the Lachlan Fold Belt. The Buller and Western Lachlan belts contain orogenic gold deposits like Bendigo, Ballarat and Fosterville in Australia and the Reefton and Lyell Goldfields in New Zealand. Siren holds a large, strategic package of tenements along the under-explored 40km long Reefton and Lyell Goldfields, with permits covering a further 40kms of buried unmined Greenland Group rocks that potentially host gold mineralisation to the south of the Blackwater mine.

Key projects include Alexander River, Big River, Auld Creek, Cumberland and Lyell. The Reefton Goldfield was discovered in 1866 and produced +2M oz of gold at an average recovered grade of 16g/t from 84 historic mines, plus an estimated alluvial gold production of 8Moz. Most underground mining ceased by 1942, with the famous Blackwater mine closing in 1951, when the shaft failed after producing ~740koz of gold down to 710m below surface.

Federation Mining is planning to extract over 700koz of gold down to 1,500m below surface by developing 3.2km twin declines to intersect unmined ore around and below the high-grade historic Blackwater mine. The Lyell Goldfield is the northern extension of the Reefton Goldfield located 40kms north. At Lyell the historic Alpine United mine produced ~80koz of gold at an average recovered grade of ~17g/t between 1874 and closing in 1912.

There are two distinctive sub-types of orogenic gold mineralisation in Victoria. The deeper (6-12kms) mesothermal deposits that formed almost all the significant gold deposits in the Bendigo and Stawell zones, and the shallower (<6km) epizonal gold and stibnite deposits in the Melbourne zone and eastern Bendigo zone, including the Fosterville and Costerfield mines. The latter gold mineralising event in Victoria is characterised by arsenopyrite /pyrite hosted refractory gold and stibnite associated gold, which is very similar to the Reefton and Lyell mineralisation.

The Sams Creek Gold Project is located 100kms NE of Lyell. The Sams Creek Dyke (SCD) is up to 60m thick and can be traced for over 7kms along strike and over 1km down dip. The porphyry dyke generally dips moderately to the north and has been folded into a series of NE plunging anticlines and synclines.

The anticlines are variably gold mineralised and have a combined Inferred and Indicated Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) of 8.9Mt @ 2.82g/t Au for 808koz of contained gold at a 1.5g/t cut-off. Seven samples from the Alexander River and Big River projects were tested at the Bureau Veritas laboratory in Perth during 2022. As expected, the samples were all refractory in nature, with the Big River sample the most refractory at 6.4% easily cyanidable gold.

All samples produced good quality rougher flotation concentrates from 17 to 117g/t Au at high recoveries. The upgrade ratio of rougher concentrate grade to feed grade averaged 8.7. Simple gravity tests were run using a 1kg sample passing through a Falcon centrifugal concentrator, followed by high-intensive leaching of the Falcon concentrate to determine the free gold component of the gravity concentrate. In conclusion, the Scoping Study flowsheet of gravity recovery followed by flotation has been verified as an appropriate process.

Based on the samples tested, gravity and flotation gold recoveries of 90-93% can be expected. If the flotation concentrate is treated with pressure oxidation followed by cyanidation a total gold recovery would be around 90%. Seven composite metallurgical samples were collected from core from the Alexander River and Big River projects and sent to Bureau Veritas in Perth.

The samples represented the Bull East, McVicar East, Loftus McKay and McVicar West shoots at Alexander River prospect and Shoot 4 at the Big River prospect labelled Reefton 1 to 6 for Alexander River and Reefton 7 for Big River. Composite 6 represented quartz reef with visible gold. Historical reports on the treatment of ores in the Reefton district illustrate that a portion of the material is refractory and, as well as gravity recovery, roasting was employed to liberate gold prior to cyanidation.

GRES completed part 1 of a scoping study in which a preliminary flowsheet of gravity gold recovery and flotation to produce a gold rich concentrate was the base case. Tests were planned to explore the validity of this approach. The testwork program devised at Bureau Veritas included: Bulk Leach Extrac Gold (BLEG) Tests, Flotation, Gravity Testing, Cyanidation, Ultra-Fine Grinding UFG) followed by cyanidation, Pressure oxidation (POX) followed by cyanidation BLEG Tests A BLEG test was conducted on each composite sample.

This involves a 24-hour leach with a high concentration of cyanide and the addition of LeachWell accelerant to determine the readily soluble gold. Hence it is a measure of how refractory the sample is. Reproducibility of the head assays was excellent.

All the samples showed they were partially refractory, with Big River the most refractory, with only 6.4% of the gold readily soluble.