Premier African Minerals Limited (LON:PREM) has increased the estimate of the amount of tungsten in the underground section of its RHA project in Zimbabwe.
The company said in a statement that measured resources rise 32% to 0.029m tonnes with a 52% increase in grade to 5.45kg WO3 (tungsten trioxide) per tonne.
Indicated resources rise by 33% to 0.076m with a 95% increase in grade to 6.31kg WO3 per tonne, while the total underground grade rises by 11% with a 16% increase in total underground mineral resources contained metal at 6,257,493 kg WO3.
George Roach, Premier’s chief executive, said: "This increase in tonnes and grade of the underground Mineral Resources at RHA provides both higher confidence in these Mineral Resources at RHA and supports our long-term confidence in the mine.
“At the same time, the recent substantial increase in the price of APT to $310-$325 per mtu has reduced the breakeven throughput tonnage required from underground ore at the predicted Resource grade to approximately 4,500 tonnes per month and increases potential profitability as and when plant optimisation completes and we are able to process at the higher throughput tonnages projected for later in Q4 this year.
“Most importantly the reduced breakeven point can also be achieved without any feed from open pit operations and supports our determined efforts over the past year to bring RHA into continuous production.
“We have commenced an independent review of the open pit Mineral Resources and we will report further when this review is completed. With ongoing curtailment in supply of wolframite from China, we believe that RHA can become one of the larger producers."
Premier is the operator and owns 49% of RHA.