PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Metals developer Sundance Resources has increased the high-grade hematite ore reserve for the first stage of its Mbalam-Nabeba project, in Cameroon and the Republic of Congo, to over half-a-billion tonnes.
The 18.5% increase to the ore reserve, which was estimated at 517-million tonnes, grading 62.2% iron, was driven by the optimisation of the high-grade ore reserve process during pit design and mine scheduling phases to produce a complementary premium product by controlling the proportion of the feed ore from the Cameroon mines to blend with feed ore from the higher alumina Congo mines.
A recently reported increase in the production rate from 35-million tonnes a year to 40-million tonnes a year also maximised the run-of-mine ore feed and proportion of blend of direct shipping ore with lower-grade ores over the full Stage 1 life-of-mine.
The reserve increase was also driven by the mining and processing of lower-grade ores through a gravity beneficiation circuit from the start of operations, rather than from the fourth year of operations, as previously planned, as well as additional indicated hematite resources estimated for the Mbalam and Nabeba deposits.
Sundance on Wednesday also reported a 4% increase in the high-grade hematite mineral resource at Mbalam-Nabeba, which was now estimated to stand at 805.7-million tonnes, grading 57.3% iron. Some 96% of this resource had been classified as indicated.
The underlying itabirite hematite resource also increased by 39%, to 5.6-billion tonnes, grading at 33.4% iron.