Abstract: THIS invention relates a method for processing a sulphide ore containing metal values comprising the integration of a sand heap leach (10) and a flotation process (12), providing a method which is suited to processing ores with significant quantities of leachable sulphides. The method includes a comminution step (14), and the classification of the comminuted ore into an oversize coarse fraction (16), a fine fraction (18) suitable for fine flotation and optionally an intermediate fraction (20) suitable for coarse flotation. A concentrate (30) containing iron sulphides from a fine flotation step (22) and optionally a concentrate (36) from a coarse flotation step (34) are blended with the oversize coarse fraction (16), to obtain a blended ore (39) is stacked and subjected to a heap leach process (40).

Abstract: THIS invention relates to a method of recovering metal values such as gold, copper, nickel, zinc and uranium from ores containing said metal values. The method includes the steps of crushing an ore (10) to provide a sand containing metal values with a P80 of less than 5 mm but greater than 1 mm; classifying the sand (12) to remove a finer fraction to provide classified sand with a P10 of greater than 0.15 mm, and a P90/P10 ratio of less than 25 and greater than 3, forming a heap (18) from the classified sand, and distributing leachant and air through the heap to leach the values from the sand in a pregnant leachate, from which the leached values may be recovered. The invention also relates to a heap formed from ore processed by this method.