Bushveld Minerals reports maiden mineral resource for Brits project

Vanadium producer Bushveld Minerals provided a maiden mineral resource estimate for the Brits Vanadium Project, located on Portion 3 of the Uitvalgrond 431 JQ farm near the town of Brits in the North West Province of South Africa on Friday.

The AIM-traded firm said the project was directly along strike from the Bushveld Vametco Alloys Mine.

It said the maiden mineral resource incorporated data from the 2018 drilling campaign, which comprised 26 drill holes over a total of 2,967 metres of diamond drilling.

The resource was reported in accordance with the 2012 JORC code, and was classified into the indicated and inferred categories.

Bushveld said the aggregate inferred and indicated mineral resource distributed across the three seams - the lower, intermediate, and upper seams - was reported as 66.8Mt at an average grade of 1.58 per cent vanadium oxide in magnetite, at a cut-off grade of 20% magnetite in whole rock for 175,400 tonnes of contained vanadium.

It said the indicated mineral resource tonnages accounted for 67% of the total combined mineral resource, and stood at 44.9Mt with an average grade of 1.59% vanadium oxide in magnetite for 115,600 tonnes of contained vanadium across the three seams.

The lower seam represented a major portion of the total combined mineral resource tonnages at the cut-off grade of 20%, with 55.5 Mt at an average grade of 1.58% vanadium oxide in magnetite for 137,000 tonnes of contained vanadium.

That represented approximately 83% of the total combined tonnage of the maiden mineral resource, Bushveld explained.

It said that, within the combined mineral resource, the intermediate seam had the highest grade of the three seams at 1.76% vanadium oxide in magnetite, though the tonnages were said to be low at the current cut-off grade of 20% magnetite in whole rock.

A geological trend of decreasing grade in vanadium for magnetite-rich layers from west to east in the Bushveld complex accounted for the lower grades on the Brits Project, in comparison to the grades at the operating Vametco Mine, the company said.

The mineral resource was reported up to a depth of 150 metres below surface, and based on the drilling on the western and central blocks of the farm Uitvalgrond Portion 3, which extended over a strike length of approximately 1.65km to the most eastern fault where the last line of drilling was completed.

As such, there was potential to increase the resource on the remaining eastern unexplored portion of the farm on a strike length of 1km.

“We are pleased to be able to report solid results confirming that we have a high-quality asset at the Brits Project, where its average grade of 1.58% vanadium oxide in magnetite is among the highest in the world,” said Bushveld Minerals chief executive officer Fortune Mojapelo.

“This represents an important step in the development of Brits - as we recently detailed our path to producing over 8,400 mtV per annum and Brits provides the optionality for additional ore feed for the Vametco plant and, if required, concentrate feed for the Vanchem plant.”