PERTH (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed IMX Resources on Friday said it would step up exploration at its Ntaka Hill project, in Tanzania, targeting mineralisation below the Sleeping Giant deposit.
Speaking at the last day of the Africa Downunder conference, IMX CEO Neal Meadows noted that the company’s focus was on understanding the extent of disseminated mineralisation around existing delineated resources, and to confirm that those resources could be exploited using conventional mining techniques, with reduced strip ratios.
“Ntaka Hill’s nickel recovery rates confirmed to date are almost 80%, putting them at the high end of the ranges of existing nickel mines,” Meadows said.
“The flowsheet is simple and robust and that points for us to a smaller, higher grade starter operation to fund eventual development of a larger, medium grade Tanzanian nickel mine.”
The Ntaka Hill project currently has a Joint Ore Reserves Committee-compliant measured and indicated resource of some 120 000 t of contained nickel, as well as an inferred resource of 238 000 t of nickel, at an average grade of 0.66% nickel.
A 2012 scoping study placed a price tag of some $230-million on the development of the Ntaka Hill project, to deliver yearly production of between 10 000 t and 15 000 t of nickel.
IMX was currently supporting the exploration and development of its Tanzanian nickel assets from proceeds from its Cairn Hill iron-ore mine, in South Australia.