Essentially they've stated they can get around 35% concentrate from North T (tardiff) using additionally processing circuitry. Which is something I and other have stated here for some time. Which is positive.
View attachment 3300050That said, the bulk sample they done the testing on, is not representative of the North T deposit. It's in fact almost 80% higher.
Which they themselves acknowledge.
View attachment 3300062So in a nutshell consider this a proof of concept at this stage, but the real test is when they use 1.46% and what the process circuit is required to obtain that 35% TREO and at what recoveries. From there it's then just a case of, what are the capital and operational costs of said circuit.
Below is the process circuit stages.
The North T flowsheet consists of the following stages:
• Crushing of ore to -60mm
• -60/+8mm with be sorted utilising a sensor based ore sorter to produce a +30% beneficiated product before being crushed to -2mm
• -8mm/+2mm material crushed to -2mm
• -2mm/+0. 5mm beneficiated using Dense Media Separation
• -0.5mm +0.15mm product beneficiated using Shaking Tables
• -0.15mm fines dewatered and combined with the DMS and shaking table concentrates
• Beneficiated product 35%-40% TREO.
North T beneficiated product will then be calcined, prior to hydrochloric acid leaching, purification and precipitation.
As they have noted utilising existing circuitry from stage 1 reduces costs of stage 2. Stage 2 becomes more of a modular additional in this instance.
In summary, a positive step in the right direction. Next step is validating this on the actual JORC grade such that it's representative of the ore body.
"These results are extremely promising, and indicate that with further optimisation a target concentrate grade of
35% TREO with a 75% recovery should be achievable, which would be considered a high grade concentrate and would provide an ideal feedstock into an extraction plant. Further, with the use of sorting and gravity separation to increase the grade of feed into a flotation circuit this will provide further opportunities for optimisation and improvement."
The above taken from announcement is the punchline you're after. The key as mentioned is a representative sample and then delineating the operational costs for doing this on a 1.46% grade product and the economical viability from it.
Solid step in the right direction, will need a few more hours to run myself through this properly but generally my 15min skim gets the generally vibe, just want to run through the mass recovery detail a bit more as well as the grind sizes and implicit equipment to support that.
SF2TH
