Prestigious Projects in Africa
ABOVE Mike Evans, Project Manager showing near surface mineralised material at Wigu Hill
mineralised carbonatite zones identified here and their continuation to the north and west. And the ultimate success is already evident: Wigu Hill falls neatly in line with the company’s vision to emerge as a low-cost producer. As the project’s name suggests, the prospect is literally a hill, lending itself to economical opencast mining. It is also highly mineralised, is course in texture and is unweathered. “While this is more than sufficient for us to reach an initial production start-up in 2013, building up to about 5 000 tpa of mixed REEs, our intention is to drill and define a substantially larger resource by the end of this year.
The latest results include 2.24% TREO over 112.4 m (including 3.92% TREO over 14 m and 3.65% TREO over 16 m), 3.04% TREO over 42 m (including 3.8% TREO over 20 m) and 3.11% TREO over 44 m (including 4.31% TREO over 14 m). These latest positive trench results continue to confirm the extent of the mineralisation on the Lower Nyati Target. They substantiate the highgrade TREO values returned from the grab and panel sampling programme, and from the initial trenching and drilling results. The company has also commenced with an environmental impact assessment (EIA), environmental and social impact assessment
BELOW Wigu Hill’s bastnaesite-rich core drilling at Twiga
The detailed exploration undertaken to date has covered less than a third of the anomalous area of rare earth interest The target this year is 10 Mt at an average grade of 5% TREOs,” Harwood continues.
The drilling plan: • drilling to define inferred resource: 2 224 m (21 holes) – completed • Twiga infill drilling: 895 m (17 holes) – completed • drilling at Tumbili and Nyati targets: 2 555 m (11 holes) – completed • 5 000 m drilling programme for Nyati target – targeted to be completed in 2012.
(ESIA) and the grant of an extension to the prospecting license for the project area. The EIA and ESIA are crucial steps in obtaining the environmental permit, required for the mining licence application and any mining operation at Wigu Hill. Montero has engaged MTL Consulting, a Tanzanian company with skilled professionals in mining and environmental areas with local and international experience, to carry out the necessary studies. The scoping study and terms of reference examining the biophysical environment and socioeconomic environment of the project have been approved by the Tanzania’s National Environment Management Council, and the EIA and ESIA at Wigu Hill are under way.
Processing and refining Montero will not only mine the Wigu Hill prospect, but process the material in two separate phases. “2013 will not only see our production start-up, but also the completion of a process plant, which will deliver a bastnaesite concentrate.” In March this year, the company signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding
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Inside Mining 09/2012