TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Project developer Arianne Phosphate has completed a successful series of customer trials that have produced a phosphate concentrate with a superior grade and lower contaminants than previously ever achieved by the company.

Arianne, which is focused on advancing the Lac à Paul project, in Quebec's Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region, on Tuesday said the trial conducted by specialist engineering firm Corem produced 1.2 t of phosphate concentrate, grading 40% phosphorus pentoxide (P₂0₅) and 0.03% contaminants.

The Frankfurt- and TSX-V-listed firm noted that the results were obtained by adding an additional step beyond Arianne's already optimised metallurgical process. The results surpassed previous metallurgical testwork that had produced a P₂0₅ concentrate of 38.8%, with 0.089% contaminants.

"The results of the customer trial are extremely encouraging and underscore the progress that we continue to make at our Lac à Paul project. Of particular note, was that the customer trial produced a concentrate with a further reduced presence of aluminium, iron and magnesium in addition to the nearly nonexistent levels of some extremely deleterious elements such as uranium and cadmium.

“We expect that these excellent results will allow us to produce a phosphate concentrate that exceeds the standards needed for commercial applications of our product. Just as important, our latest results confirm our belief that our concentrate will be priced at a premium,” COO Jean-Sebastien David said.

Several organisations that might potentially become buyers of Arianne's phosphate concentrate product participated in completing the customer trial. The organisations had indicated that a reduced level of contaminants would provide an advantage for Arianne's phosphate concentrate, particularly for the production of concentrate used in specialised commercial applications.

WARRANT ISSUE
Meanwhile, Arianne had issued 400 000 nontransferable common share purchase warrants to Mercury Financing as part of an interest payment deferral agreement struck on Tuesday.

The lender had agreed to defer about $600 000 in interest payments regarding its two credit facilities of $10-million and $2.5-million, entered into in 2012 and 2013, respectively.

The credit facilities were used to complete Arianne's feasibility study for its Lac à Paul project.

Each warrant entitled Mercury to buy one common share of Arianne at a price of $0.74 apiece until March 16, 2016. The warrants were subject to a hold period of four months and one day, expiring on July 17.