While we wait for some news.. An article in the Mining News...

While we wait for some news..
An article in the Mining News today - Nothing new, light reading.

Pilbara Minerals a rising starTuesday, 30 June 2015

Kristie Batten

PILBARA Minerals expects to have the world’s second-largest spodumene deposit by the end of the year, which may be why its shares have doubled in a month.


The company would have to be one of the top-performing resource stocks, with its shares rising from A4.8c on June 1 to 12c as of yesterday’s close.


It has been a busy month for Pilbara, raising nearly $6.5 million at the start of the month and rapidly advancing two projects – each within 100km of Port Hedland.


Pilbara is on the verge of production from the Tabba Tabba tantalum project, a 50-50 joint venture with Nagrom.


Mining is set to start in the third quarter and Pilbara managing director Neil Biddle told a Resources Rising Stars lunch in Perth on Friday that the final operating permits were “days away”.


The company has been ready to go at Tabba Tabba for about six months, but was delayed by an issue with the tailings dam.


The project has low capital costs of just $8 million, of which $7 million has already been spent.


Tabba Tabba is forecast to generate $18 million of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation in its first year of operation.


The high-grade project will produce about 10% of global tantalum output once in production.


However, the main game for Pilbara is the Pilgangoora lithium-tantalite project, which is a globally significant – and still growing – spodumene deposit.


The June 2014 updated resource is 23.8 million tonnes at 0.02% tantalite containing 11.3 million pounds of tantalite, with a corresponding lithium resource of 20.48Mt at 1.16% lithium oxide for 237,000 tonnes of lithium oxide.


“Pilgangoora is large in scale, world class in every sense,” Biddle said.


The company has only been drilling the deposit for six months and is confident further exploration will boost the tonnage to 60Mt by the end of the year, with 15-20Mt of high-grade resources within the total.


Pilbara has three drill rigs active at the project.


“We're expecting a fairly big tonnage boost,” Biddle said.


“We ultimately expect more than 100 million tonnes.


“By the end of year, Pilgangoora should quite comfortably be the second largest spodumene deposit in the world.”


The world’s largest spodumene deposit is Global Advanced Metals’ Greenbushes deposit.


“Ours is also shaping up to be of that ilk,” Biddle said.


“If we're half as big as them it's not hard to see where the value can be in Pilbara.”


At the same time, Biddle expects to have raw data for the Pilgangoora prefeasibility study by year-end.


The company is targeting the production of a raw spodumene concentrate saleable to the market with a mine life of at least 15-20 years.


The aim is to produce about 220,000 tonnes per annum of spodumene concentrate.


Biddle said the project only required a simple crushing and screening plant, which would be less than $100 million new, and even less second-hand.


“There’s dozens of them sitting idle around Australia,” he said.


There is also the possibility of using GAM’s Wodgina plant. Atlas Iron uses some of the infrastructure for its iron ore operation of the same name, but Biddle said there was room for Pilgangoora to also use Wodgina.


“If that evolves, Pilgangoora will be fast tracked,” Biddle said.


Pilbara already has an offtake agreement with GAM over Tabba Tabba and expects to sign one over Pilgangoora shortly.


Biddle expects the lithium market to only keep growing due to emerging technology such as electric cars.


“Lithium is expected to be in short supply,” he said.


“If you believe the hype the lithium market is going to double between now and 2020.”


Lithium stocks have been in favour in the past few months, with companies such as Cobre Montana, European Metals Holdings and General Mining Corporation also posting healthy gains.