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20 June 2013

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Shine on Mambare

Friday, 15 June 2012

Lauren Barrett

RESOURCE potential is slowly being revealed at Direct Nickel’s Mambare project which it shares with Regency Mines in Papua New Guinea after a mineral resource estimate for the project boosted its contained nickel by 67%.

Image courtesy of Regency Mines.
Hot oil commissioning at the test plant. Image courtesy of DNI.

Announced through Australian Securities Exchange-listed Wintech Group, technology developer Direct Nickel revealed the updated Mambare resource was estimated by the Perth office of CSA Global.

Direct Nickel aims to use Wintech for a backdoor ASX listing when market conditions become less choppy.

The indicated and inferred resource now totals 162.5 million tonnes grading 0.94% nickel and 0.09% cobalt for 1.53Mt of contained nickel using a 0.6% nickel cut-off grade.

The latest estimate represents a 67% jump in contained nickel compared to April 2012, when a maiden resource was announced.

The maiden resource at the project was calculated at 95.1Mt grading 0.96% nickel and 0.08% copper.

The resource increase was calculated across 27.8sq.km and resulted from the inclusion of 2008 drilling and 2011 ground-penetrating radar results.

Mambare project manager Ian Warden said the latest results were a boost for the project’s development.

“They build the Mambare nickel project towards its potential to be a nickel laterite deposit of globally significant scale and in addition the higher-grade zones identified have very positive implications for the economics of a future Mambare operation,” he said.

“Given the current resource lies mostly on the steeper and more eroded slopes below the plateau, we expect to find similar or better continuity of mineralisation in future drilling across the plateau surface.”

To date, only 2sq.km of the 80sq.km plateau has been drilled, signifying the potential for more resource upgrades.

Warden said work at the project was continuing to address future resource definition work, metallurgical testing and scoping studies.

The Mambare project is situated on the Mambare plateau in PNG’s Oro province and is jointly owned by London-listed Regency and Direct Nickel.

Wintech shares will resume trading once reconstruction of the company has been completed.

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