Elementos Ltd (ASX:ELT) is seeking to boost potential economic returns from its Oropesa Tin Project in Spain with the start of an optimisation program designed to increase the project’s overall resource, annual production and mine life.
The program follows the release of the Oropresa Economic Study in May, which positioned the project as a low-cost, globally ‘significant’ new tin development with a prospective annual production of 2,440 tonnes of tin in concentrate over a 14-year mine life.
Resource "could be far greater"
Chairman Dr Andy Greig said the optimisation works presented a strong opportunity to extract considerably more value from the project which is based on a simple, open cut mining and conventional processing model in a first world country with well-developed infrastructure.
“Our goal is to create value uplift potential for shareholders by enhancing the economics of the project as it’s advanced towards full feasibility and development.
“We’re confident that the tin resource at Oropesa could be far greater than currently known so we’re re-examining previous drill data, planning new drilling and incorporating a large low-grade tin mineralised halo around the existing resource.
“Following the completion of these optimisation works, a new JORC mineral resource will be prepared and Oropesa will be ready to progress into the feasibility study stage and finalise environmental permitting.”
He said several other optimisation programs aimed at improving the metallurgical performance of the project will be implemented during feasibility.
Drilling to expand mineral resource
Further drilling is planned to expand and optimise Oropesa’s JORC mineral resource, including:
- Priority 1: Converting existing inferred resources into indicated resources which were excluded from the Economic Study Production Target to improve overall and early waste-to-ore stripping ratios and increase the mine life;
- Priority 2: Near-surface fault-controlled mineralisation currently excluded from the current geological resource model; and
- Priority 3: Defining potential additional resources at shallow depths to the immediate northwest of the current resource, identified by a significant geophysical anomaly (IP) and outcropping gossans.
Elementos has completed the drilling approvals process and plans to start drilling when coronavirus travel restrictions are eased.