The additional drilling will provide infill data aimed at converting inferred resources to indicated or measured categories to support the re-estimation of mine reserves and extend the life-of-mine (LOM) plan to ~20 years based on conversion ratios seen at Butcherbird previously. The increase in the “reserve tail” is important for project financing and can open the project up to a wider range of potential financiers in addition to NAIF, who are currently undertaking due diligence2.
HIGHLIGHTS
The Project hosts a global resource of over 260Mt of manganese ore however the current reserves are limited to the areas which have been drilled out to a sufficient density to support measured and indicated classifications which are required as the basis for a statement of reserves. The current drilling programme has been designed to infill existing inferred resources to a sufficient data density, based on variographic analysis, to convert the inferred resources within granted mining lease M52/1074 to indicated and/or measured.
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