JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Aim-listed multicommodity company Premier African Minerals has entered into a nonbinding memorandum of understanding (MoU) with an offtake partner, which would acquire tungsten from Premier’s 49%-owned RHA tungsten project, in the Kamativi tin belt, in Zimbabwe.

The MoU outlined the basis of cooperation between the parties to negotiate the detailed terms and conditions of an offtake agreement for a proportion of tungsten concentrate or other tungsten material from RHA for a minimum period to be defined, subject to price and product specifications.

"The signing of our first offtake MoU is a key development for the commercialisation of RHA,” Premier CEO George Roach commented in a statement on Monday.

The MoU would remain in effect for two months and the parties were working to finalise an offtake agreement, the mining company said.

Meanwhile, Premier also reported that additional drilling of Lode 2A of the RHA project, as recommended in the preliminary economic assessment, had started and was expected to be completed by the end of this month.

To date, three of the planned thirteen holes had been completed, geological logging was proceeding in preparation for cutting and sampling of the mineralised intersections, and quartz veins with visible tungsten mineralisation in the form of coarse grained wolframite had been intersected in all three holes with logging indicating a correlation with previously identified and assayed mineralisation intersected in previous drilling.

SGS South Africa had also been commissioned to undertake mineralogical and metallurgical testwork on the drill samples obtained from Lode 2A. This work would be used to refine the metallurgical design and to further the finalisation of the offtake agreement, Premier said.

“Our objective for the current drilling at RHA is to upgrade both the quantity and the quality of the code-compliant resource; basically from inferred and indicated to indicated and measured. We are continuing to assess financing alternatives for the construction of RHA," Roach added.

Premier also intended to, early in 2014, exercise an option to acquire the remaining 40 RHA mineral claim blocks it did not already own, and was in negotiations to acquire additional tungsten deposits in Zimbabwe.

Further, the company stated that a comprehensive review of its Togo properties and those held by AgriMinco Corp, in which Premier held a 42% interest, had been undertaken and additional, highly prospective areas have been identified.