PERTH (miningweekly.com) – A prefeasibility study (PFS) into the Sigatoka iron sands project, in Fiji, has placed a $83.2-million price tag on the development, said owner Dome Gold Mines on Tuesday.
With a pay-back period of less than two years, the project was expected to have a net present value of $236.9-million and an internal rate of return of 55%.
The PFS assumed that mining would be by conventional dredging of the river bed and nearby dunal deposits, with operations in both areas to be conducted simultaneously. However, river dredging would start a year earlier than dunal mining.
The project was expected to produce about 351 000 t/y of magnetite concentrate, as well as 260 000 t/y of nonmagnetic bulk heavy mineral concentrates, along with 1.96-million tonnes a year of industrial sand and 684 000 t/y of gravel.
“We are very much encouraged by the emergence of such a robust project from the PFS. The key to the economics is the generation and sale of multiple product lines, making the current weak iron-ore price much less of a concern,” said Dome CEO Jack McCarthy.
Moving ahead, Dome would work to obtain a mining lease over Sigatoka, and to complete the definitive feasibility study.