TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Saskatoon, Saskatchewan-based Great Western Minerals Group (GWMG) on Tuesday said it had nearly tripled the overall resources at its flagship Steenkampskraal rare-earth elements (REE) project, in South Africa’s Northern Cape province.
The aspiring fully integrated TSX-V-listed REE-based metals and metal alloys producer announced that a Canadian National Instrument 43-101-compliant mineral resource estimate, dated October 31, had lifted the overall in situ measured and indicated total rare-earth oxides, including yttrium oxide (TREO), resource by 171%, or 54 800 t, to 86 900 t.
The resource update comprised 16 600 t TREO from the in situ resource now being classified in the measured category, and 67 000 t of TREO being classified in the in situ indicated category, an increase of 38 200 t.
The resource update prepared by consulting engineers Snowden Mining Industry Consultants, also included the two historic tailings dams and the addition of low-radioactivity materials recovered during site clean-up, all of which now reported to the indicated category, for a total of 46 000 t surface material hosting 3 300 t TREO at a lower grade of 7.18%, when compared with the December 2012 resource estimate.
"A significant increase in assay data from core drilling and underground sampling at Steenkampskraal during the last year has provided input for a new resource estimate. We also saw a substantial upgrade of the previous inferred resource component to the indicated category or better, and increased the overall tonnes of TREO that are candidates for conversion to formal reserves,” company president and CEO Marc LeVier said.
LeVier in May told Mining Weekly Online he was on the lookout for a toll milling agreement to speed up the start of production from Steenkampskraal, unlike rival TSX-listed Frontier Rare Earths, which is developing the Zandkopsdrift REE project in the same province, which plans to build a REE separation plant on site.
GWMG’s stock rose half a cent to C$0.075 apiece on the TSX-V early on Tuesday morning.