P2 Gold’s Phase Three Results Beat Its Own PEA Assumptions

The Gabbs deposit has sat in Nevada for decades. Not because the gold was absent, and not because operators failed to notice a copper-gold porphyry system on the Walker Lane Trend, one of the most geologically productive corridors in North America. They noticed. They drilled. They left. The problem was never the gold. It was the copper that came with it.

Multiple prior operators encountered the same barrier: cyanide-soluble copper in the oxide ore consumed reagent, wrecked recovery economics, and made the deposit unworkable under conventional heap-leach approaches. P2 Gold’s bet was that SART (sulphidisation, acidification, recycling, thickening), a process already running at commercial scale elsewhere, could solve the chemistry that geology could not. The Phase Three metallurgical results released in late 2025 are the first hard evidence that this bet has technical merit.

Here is what the Phase Three data actually tells you, where the remaining risks sit, and what the feasibility study timeline means if you are evaluating P2 Gold stock now.

Why Gabbs frustrated every operator before P2 Gold

The geology at Gabbs was never the obstacle. The deposit sits in Nye County, Nevada, on the Walker Lane Trend, a structure that has hosted major discoveries and attracted serious exploration capital for decades. Gabbs is a copper-gold porphyry system with oxide mineralisation containing enough cyanide-soluble copper to break conventional heap-leach economics. That chemistry is what sent every prior operator home.

Gabbs belongs to a deposit class where the co-occurrence of copper and gold is a defining characteristic: porphyry copper deposits typically carry gold as a byproduct, and the grade relationship between the two metals shapes every processing and economic decision that follows.

The Walker Lane Trend geology has drawn serious exploration capital for decades precisely because the structural corridor has repeatedly delivered commercial-scale discoveries, giving Gabbs a jurisdictional and geological context that operators historically viewed as favourable even when the copper chemistry was not.

The mechanism is straightforward:

• Cyanide consumption: Copper dissolves alongside gold in a standard cyanide heap leach, binding with the cyanide reagent that was supposed to extract gold. Net reagent costs climb.
• Cost escalation: As copper ties up more cyanide, operators must add progressively more reagent to maintain gold dissolution rates, pushing operating costs past the point where the gold is worth recovering.
• Solution contamination: The pregnant solution sent to the gold recovery circuit arrives loaded with copper-cyanide complexes, impairing the efficiency of gold precipitation and reducing the quantity and quality of recoverable gold.

The fact that multiple credible operators with access to the same geology and jurisdiction chose to walk away tells you the barrier was real and the solution was non-obvious. This is not a project that stalled because of permitting delays or capital markets. It stalled because the chemistry would not cooperate. That context matters for evaluating any claimed fix: the right posture is serious scrutiny, not automatic scepticism and not automatic credulity.

What SART actually does, step by step

The signal that matters to investors is this: the copper that previously destroyed Gabbs’ economics can now produce a saleable concentrate while freeing cyanide to cut operating costs. SART is the process that makes both things happen simultaneously.

SART stands for sulphidisation, acidification, recycling, and thickening. It is a four-stage process designed to intercept copper-cyanide complexes after heap leaching and before gold recovery:

1. Sulphidisation: A sulphide reagent is added to the pregnant solution. Sulphide ions react selectively with copper, breaking the copper-cyanide complexes and precipitating copper as insoluble copper sulphide.
2. Acidification: Sulphuric acid lowers the pH, optimising copper sulphide precipitation and releasing the cyanide that was bound to copper back into solution as free cyanide.
3. Recycling: The acidic solution is neutralised with lime, regenerating free cyanide that returns to the heap-leach circuit instead of being consumed or destroyed.
4. Thickening: Copper sulphide solids are thickened, filtered, and dewatered to produce a high-grade copper-silver concentrate. The clarified solution, now low in copper and carrying usable cyanide, proceeds to the gold recovery circuit.

The core shift for investors: Copper that previously consumed cyanide and collapsed gold recovery at Gabbs now produces a saleable copper-silver concentrate while the freed cyanide returns to the leaching circuit, reducing net reagent costs. SART converts the deposit’s biggest liability into two simultaneous advantages.

The cyanide recycling loop is not a secondary benefit. It is the mechanism that converts SART from a copper-removal process into an operating cost enabler. Lower net reagent consumption compounds the revenue uplift from copper concentrate sales, meaning the economics improve from both directions at once.

SART at commercial scale: what the precedents show

SART is not experimental chemistry. It is already operating at commercial scale at other mines, providing validation of both the underlying chemistry and its scalability. Newmont’s Yanacocha operation is the most widely cited commercial precedent. The technology risk that typically attaches to novel flowsheet elements is substantially lower here because the process has been proven in real operating conditions, not just laboratory settings.

What Phase Three test results actually changed in the investment case

The Phase Three metallurgical programme, conducted by Kappes, Cassiday and Associates, delivered results that are not just better than what prior operators achieved at Gabbs. They are better than the assumptions P2 Gold used to model the project’s own economics in its October 2025 preliminary economic assessment (PEA, an early-stage study estimating a project’s potential economic viability based on initial technical and financial assumptions).

Gold recovery of 94.5% versus an 85% baseline is a meaningful gap. Copper recovery at 79.9% versus 67% is equally material. But the leach kinetics improvement is where the working capital story sits.

The test columns reached 98% gold extraction and 85% copper extraction by day 58 of leaching. Complete recovery required 110-120 days in total, cutting 30 days off the 150-day cycle the PEA had assumed.

Shorter leach cycles mean less ore sitting on the pad as in-process inventory. In practical terms, mined tonnes convert to cash flow faster once the operation is running. That is not a technical detail; it is a direct reduction in working capital requirements.

The PEA used metal price assumptions of US$2,350 per ounce for gold, US$29.00 per ounce for silver, and US$4.50 per pound of copper. The Phase Three recoveries, applied against those price assumptions, push materially more metal through to revenue. The PEA was already built on test-scale results, which means its own baseline was conservative on the metallurgy. Phase Three did not just beat historical performance at Gabbs; it beat the assumptions the project used to model itself.

What the feasibility study still has to answer

Phase Three results are bench-scale chemistry. Getting from a test column to a continuous commercial plant introduces a different category of risk, and investors carrying a position in P2 Gold need to understand exactly which questions remain open.

Execution risk in mining at the scale-up stage follows recognisable patterns: recoveries achieved in controlled test conditions diverge from commercial-plant performance when ore variability, throughput pressures, and reagent availability interact simultaneously rather than in sequence.

The residual risk categories break into three areas:

• Scale-up and operational stability: Bench and pilot recoveries must hold in a large, continuous plant where ore composition, temperature, and flow rates vary over time. Scaling SART chemistry from controlled test conditions to a commercial-scale operation introduces variability that test work cannot fully replicate.
• pH process control: Correct pH management is critical to SART performance throughout both the acidification and sulphidisation stages. When operating parameters drift outside target ranges, the consequences can include lower copper extraction, elevated cyanide losses, and unplanned process interruptions. This is not a theoretical concern; it is the single most commonly cited operational risk in SART-equipped plants.
• Permitting and infrastructure: Gabbs sits in arid Nevada. Water management, power supply, and logistics planning move from high-level concepts in the PEA to hard commitments in the feasibility study. These are not metallurgical risks, but they are capital cost and timeline risks.

The two near-term milestones that will answer the outstanding economic questions are clearly defined:

The Q1 2027 feasibility study is the moment where the metallurgical optimism expressed in Phase Three either translates into bankable economics or runs into the friction of real capital and operating cost estimates. Until that document lands, investors holding P2 Gold are carrying execution risk on the assumption that bench-scale chemistry will survive commercial-scale conditions.

For investors wanting to understand the specific economic commitments the feasibility study must satisfy before the project can secure project financing, our dedicated guide to the Gabbs bankable feasibility study covers what bankable status requires and how the Q1 2027 study will be evaluated.

This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. Investors should conduct their own research and consult with financial professionals before making investment decisions.

Making an informed call on P2 Gold before the feasibility study lands

The analytical arc is clear when you step back and read it as a sequence. The copper-gold problem at Gabbs was real, well-documented, and sufficient to drive away multiple credible operators. SART is a credible solution with commercial precedent at other mines. Phase Three results are materially better than the project’s own PEA assumptions across gold recovery, copper recovery, and leach kinetics. The remaining questions are about execution and full-scale economics, not about whether the underlying chemistry works.

What this tells you about the investment case is specific: Gabbs at this stage is a pre-feasibility exploration-stage thesis. The Phase Three results have improved its risk-reward profile meaningfully compared with twelve months ago, but the binary event risk has not been eliminated. It has been moved to a defined point on the calendar.

Two variables are worth tracking before the feasibility study:

• Q4 2026 updated mineral resource estimate: This will confirm or adjust the resource size and grade that underpin the feasibility study’s production assumptions. The economics only work if the resource supports them.
• Any interim SART operational or pilot data released ahead of the formal study. Scale-up performance data, if published, would be the earliest indicator of whether Phase Three recoveries hold beyond the bench.

The longer-dated binary event is the Q1 2027 feasibility study itself. That document will put hard numbers on capital cost, operating cost, and project returns, the three variables that determine whether 94.5% gold recovery and 79.9% copper recovery at bench scale translate into a project worth building.

Capital cost predictability in the transition from feasibility study to construction financing is where many projects with strong metallurgical results encounter a different class of risk: the gap between estimated and sanctioned capital has historically been the single largest source of project value destruction in the sector.

For a US-based investor evaluating P2 Gold (TSXV: PGLD; OTCQB: PGLDF), the Phase Three results represent a materially stronger entry thesis than existed a year ago. The metallurgical barrier that disqualified Gabbs for every prior operator has been substantially addressed, and the project’s own economic assumptions have been beaten by the test data. The path forward runs through two specific near-term catalysts and one feasibility study that will determine whether the chemistry that works in a column can work at a mine.

Past performance does not guarantee future results. Financial projections are subject to market conditions and various risk factors. These statements are speculative and subject to change based on market developments and company performance.