Premier African Minerals reports on positive RHA review

Mining exploration and production company Premier African Minerals reported on Wednesday that a review of immediately available tungsten rich material at its RHA Tungsten Operations in Zimbabwe has been completed.

The AIM-traded firm said the review showed sufficient tonnage immediately available - both in the open pit and underground operations - to support an initial three years of operations at 39,000 tons per month, once the proposed use of an X-Ray Transmission system for ore sorting has been installed at the ore processing plant.

Premier’s target date for installation remained the end of November.

The board said the XRT ore sorter is expected to be supplied on a toll basis, and the company is fully funded for the upgrade.

At the planned 39,000 tonnes per month of ore mined, it is estimated that RHA should be producing about 10,000 metric ton units of tungsten trioxide concentrate per month, which is equivalent to approximately $1.12m per month in gross revenue at the current net price of $112 per mtu, which would be received by RHA.

“The review at the company's RHA tungsten mine indicates that we have at least three years of tungsten rich material immediately available from the open pit and underground operations,” said CEO George Roach.

“We are targeting a mining and processing rate of 39,000 tonnes per month, with 23,000 tonnes per month coming from the open pit and 16,000 tonnes per month scheduled from underground.

“The successful installation of the XRT ore sorting unit, in combination with sufficient tonnage able to be mined with little or no development will result in significantly higher feed grades to the plant with higher production at lower cost and the company is now pushing hard to increase production and bring the project into profit by the end of December this year.”