Photo by: Bloomberg
JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Toronto-listed Tsodilo Resources has defined a large inferred mineral resource estimate of 441-million tons with an average grade of 29.4% iron in Block 1 of its flagship Xaudum iron project, in north-west Botswana.
The company believed this resource, which was declared as part of a maiden National Instrument 43-101 technical report, was the “tip of the iceberg”, given the previously reported exploration target of between five-billion and seven-billion tons.
“This is a major step for the project and confirms that the Xaudum project can be a major iron-ore project for Botswana. It has the potential to supply iron-ore and iron products to not only the whole of the Southern African region but [also] to the world,” chairperson and CEO James Bruchs said in a statement.
The company noted that there was significant potential to increase the mineral resource though ongoing exploration, as it represented “only a fraction” of the potential mineralisation delimited by the ground magnetics.
Metallurgical testwork carried out on drill core composites indicated the possibility that a high-grade magnetite concentrate could be produced from a combination of all of the mineralised geodomains found with an average magnetite concentrate grade of between 67.2% and 68.5% iron and with a silica content of between 4.2% and 3% silicon dioxide, depending on grind size.
Tsodilo Resources was now moving into the next phase of exploration at the project and was targeting a significant increase in the mineral resource by drilling out the Block 2 area, maintaining its ongoing metallurgical testwork programme.