I was doing a bit more research into Lindian last night and have discovered a very interesting document that reveals just how much ore they are sitting on – and it is 37 million tonnes!
As part of my research, I discovered this document from the Journal of African Earth Sciences (published by Elsevier) about the bauxite deposits in the Lushoto distric of Tanzania which is exactly where the Lindian bauxite license is. It was submitted in 2001 and accepted and published in 2003.
https://docslide.net/documents/geol...te-deposits-in-lushoto-district-usambara.html
To paraphrase the report:
Material was always mined in Lushoto for road ballast and building material.
In 1989 Mutakyahwa and Valeton studied the material and reported that it was high-grade bauxite.
In 1993 the Genmin mining group did a follow up study to assess the bauxite deposit in terms of quality and reserves. They initially assessed the deposit to conatin 15 million tonnes of bauxite ore.
After further research they estimated is that the Mabughai-Mlomboza deposit is 1.5km long, 0.5km wide and covers an area of approximately 750,000m2.
The bauxite crust has a thickness of 14.5m and the total estimated reserve in this deposit is 29 million tonnes.
The Kidunadai-Magamba bauxite deposit covers an area of 120,000 m2 and the bauxite thickness is 25m giving an estimated reserve of 8 million tonnes.
The bauxite was estimated to be economically viable especially because they are so close together that they can be mined using the same infrastructure set-up.
The high grade bauxite ore contain 40-69 wt% Al2O3.
When we compare this historical data to the assays returned by Lindina in their RNS of the 1st September 2017 we see that AL2O3 percentages vary from 23.1% to 62.82% which is pretty close to the estimates made back in 1993.
Furthermore, if you look at the assay results listed in the historical document the we can see that the samples are almost identical – not just for the AL2O3 (Aluminium oxide) but also for the SIO2 (Silicon Dioxide) and the Fe2O3 (Iron oxide). This is the same place and the same samples.
The correlation between the two sample sets (taken nearly 25 years apart) is so close with the AL2O3 that if you take the average of all of all 46 of the 1993 samples you get a figure of 51.7613% AL2O3 and if you take an average of all 21 of the 2017 samples then you get an average AL2O3 of 51.7609! They are less than 0.004% different!!
So now we know that Lindian have 37 million tonnes of bauxite ore with an average purity of 51.76%.
This gives them a total tonnage of aluminium of 19,151,200 tonnes of aluminium.
This investment is looking better and better.
(20min delay)