PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Mineral developer Thor Mining has unveiled a development plan for its recently acquired Pilot Mountain tungsten project, in the US, which would eventually bring the project into production.

The three-stage development plan had been designed to optimise, develop and permit the existing Desert Scheelite resource and project exploration targets through to project development-ready status.

The Pilot Mountain project consists of five deposits, all within close proximity of each other, and has a total exploration target of between 11-million and 23-million tonnes, grading between 03% and 0.5% tungsten.

The Desert Scheelite deposit has a Joint Ore Reserves Committee-compliant resource of 6.8-million tonnes, grading 0.31% tungsten, while the Garnet deposit has an exploration target of between 1.5-million and 2-million tonnes, at between 0.35% and 0.4% tungsten.

“The potential for the Pilot Mountain project to be ranked as one of the larger, non-Chinese tungsten deposits should not be discounted,” said Thor executive chairperson Mick Billings.

The three-stage development plan would comprise confirmatory drilling of tier-one targets, enabling an updated resource estimate for the Garnet and Gunmetal deposits, as well as initial scoping studies and advancement of project permitting.

The second stage would see the expansion and infill of tier-one resource drilling and testing of tier-two targets to upgrade the resource estimates and enable initial assessment of reserves.

Stage three of the plan would see the completion of the resource drilling and studies for reserve estimates, as well as definitive feasibility studies and project permitting.

“Previous exploration was halted due to market forces rather than lack of targets. At Pilot Mountain, Thor has a number of walk-up drill targets along with very interesting longer-term exploration opportunities,” said Billings.

“There is much to do, including follow-up work on very promising metallurgical testwork as well as other environmental and other technical studies; however, this has potential to become a project of considerable substance.”