African Minerals Ltd (LON:AMI) announced today that it has doubled its resource estimate for the Tonkolili iron ore project.
Tonkolili in Sierra Leone, West Africa, is the flagship project for the mineral exploration and development company. At Tonkolili, over 61,000 metres of core drilling has been completed, using up to four drill rigs at the Numbara, Simbili and Marampon deposits.
Today the company gave an update, highlighting that it has doubled the JORC compliant resource estimate to 10.5 tonnes. This is a significant increase from an assessment in May 2009, where only 5.1bn tonnes of iron ore were estimated.
The quality of the mineral was assessed by consultants from SRK. They analysed 90,893 diamond drill metres and concluded that 9.7bn tonnes of the mineral resource has an average in situ grade of 30.1% iron, with the remaining 0.8 tonnes grading in situ 16.8% iron. AMMTEC, another consultant, revealed that the Tonkolili iron ore could be converted into high quality grade iron ore concentrates using metallurgical processes.
The Chief Executive Alan Watling commented:
"I am delighted with our progress at Tonkolili. We have doubled the size of the resource having completed what we believe to be the largest exploration programme in Africa during 2008 and 2009, Tonkolili is now firmly in place as the largest reported JORC compliant magnetite iron ore mineral resource in the world. Furthermore, independent industrial pilot metallurgical testwork demonstrates that a premium quality product can be produced with very high grades and low levels of impurities."
The combination of the size and quality of iron ore concentrate produced at pilot plant scale, together with close proximity to railway and port infrastructure over which the Company has a 99 year lease, certainly provides the platform for a stand-out project. I am confident that the Company's experienced management team will deliver on the targets we are setting ourselves. Coupled with the market forecast of significant increases in iron ore prices in the next two years, we are in a very strong position to realise the full potential of the Project and to compete alongside leading iron ore producers in supplying international steel markets."
Going forward, plans for a feasibility study of Tonkolili have been postponed to H2 2010, due to the company's Hematite Development and Production…
