Sundance ups Mbalam-Nabeba reserve

From this afternoon's Mining News:


Sundance ups Mbalam-Nabeba reserve

Wednesday, 20 May 2015


Jack McGinn


SUNDANCE Resources has increased the ore reserve at its Mbalam-Nabeba iron ore project in central Africa by 18% following a series of optimisation studies at the site. The project, which sits on the border of the Republic of Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo, now has a probable high grade hematite ore reserve of 517 million tonnes at 62.2% iron. The Mbalam area of the project comprises 154Mt of the reserve at 62.9% iron, while the Nabeba area contains 363Mt at 61.9%. The ore reserve, which was reviewed by AMC Consultants, contains low levels of impurities, with silica at 4.5%, alumina at 2.8% and phosphorus at 0.1%.

Combined with an increase in the project’s production rate from 35Mt per annum to 40Mt per annum, stage one mine life at Mbalam-Nabeba will be in the order of 13 years. The company said the ore reserve upgrade was the result of optimisation studies conducted during the pit design and mine scheduling phases which will control the proportion of impurities feed ore from different areas of the project.The decision was also made to mine and process lower grade ores through a gravity beneficiation circuit from the start of mining, rather than waiting four years as was previously planned.

In conjunction with the ore reserve upgrade the project’s mineral resource has been increased by 4% to 805.7 million tonnes at 57.3% iron, including 96% in the indicated category. The underlying itabirite hematite mineral resource was increased by 39% to 5.6 billion tonnes at 33.4% iron. The increases to the mineral resource came about through the inclusion of holes drilled at the Nabeba deposit and final laboratory analysis of drill holes.

The transitional domain at the Mbarga and Mbarga South deposits was also lowered to include material containing more than 45% iron.

The decision to increase the capacity of the mine to 40Mtpa over the first stage of the project was made as part of a comprehensive cost and value review conducted over the March quarter.

Sundance said in its quarterly report that it was currently in the process of signing equity investors for port and rail infrastructure to allow for the increased capacity and arranging debt funding to develop the project.

Prior to the review the project had known infrastructure costs of $US3.5 billion ($A4.4 billion) and a construction period of three and a half years.


Cheers,

Samson