Giant King River vanadium project becomes mammoth
Date: Jun 25, 2018
King River Copper is evaluating the possibility of almost doubling the size of its proposed Speewah vanadium–titaniumproject in the East Kimberley after receiving a swag of very encouraging results from an initial mining study.
In an update to the ASX this week, the company reported the best case to emerge from an initial mining study by CSA Global was a large pit measuring 4.2km by 1.2km with a depth of 90m.
According to the company, this could produce sufficient material for several decades of economic production at respectable grades.
The proposed pit would have a crazy low strip ratio of 0.4 to 1, taking full advantage of the shallow and flat-lying nature of the central vanadium deposit and its homogenous mineralisation.
Based on these results, King River said it was now contemplating an almost doubling of the operation proposed in the company’s 2012 scoping study.
The original study envisaged mining 6.3 million tonnes a year at a strip ratio of 0.5 to 1 to produce 75,000 tonnes of titanium dioxide, 12,400 tonnes of vanadium pentoxide and 410,000 tonnes of hematite.
CSA’s pit optimisation study was based only on measured and indicated resources, which, at 531 million tonnes is just a fraction of the inferred resource of more than 4,000 million tonnes.
The company also updated the market on extensive engineering studies on benefication and processing options for the giant, polymetallic deposit and management is working hard to take the operation as far as possible downstream to achieve the maximum value add from the project.
