29th Sep 2015 11:21
LONDON (Alliance News) - W Resources PLC Tuesday said it has made "strong progress" at its La Parrilla mine in Spain and said there is the potential to reduce both the capital and operating costs at the project and to significantly upgrade the tungsten content.
The miner also said the upgraded mineral resource estimate is on track for issue in the next "three to four months."
The miner said it has completed 1,302 metres of diamond core drilling and 1,594 metres of grade control reverse circulation drilling in the fast track mine area, aimed at bringing the project into production sooner than the enlarged project. It also the first phase of extensive metallurgical pilot testing and equipment testing.
The results from that activity has shown there is the potential to reduce capital and operating costs and to quadruple the tungsten trioxide content.
Pilot X-Ray ore sorting trials confirm 20% of the run of mine feed can be rejected at 25 milimetres whilst recovering greater than 96% of the tungsten. Pilot scale jig testing has confirmed 50% of the mass can be rejected during pre-concentration at 10 milimetres whilst recovering more than 85% of the tungsten. This presents significant upside potential through reduction of both capital and operating expenditures by rejecting 60% of the run of mine feed prior to fine grinding.
"This provides nearly a 200% upgrade in tungsten trioxide content before final concentration stages, which makes La Parrilla project comparable in the high grade of feed to the concentrator to some of the best global tungsten projects," said W Resources.
Assay results from the drilling conducted will be released from the fourth quarter of 2015, and the upgraded JORC compliant mineral resource estimate is on track for issue in the next "three to four months," it said.
"La Parrilla continues to build momentum on the technical, approval and finance fronts. We expect strong results from both the drilling and metallurgical programmes, and project economics, which should allow us to deliver a low operational cost project. Final mining authorisation is on track for the fourth quarter of 2015 and the priority of the team is on financing and development preparation," said Chairman Michael Masterman.
W Resources shares were down 13% to 0.699 pence per share on Tuesday afternoon.
By Joshua Warner; [email protected]; @JoshAlliance
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