Amur Minerals pledges 'substantial increase' to resource estimates

AMC pointed out that as earlier estimates were based on deposits with a total strike length of 1.4km, and that the new assessment covered a strike of 3.6km as a result of recent discoveries at the neighbouring Ikenskoe/Sobolevsky and Kubuk orebody deposits, the QAQC had shown a significant jump in resource estimates.

SGS Minerals, which ran the external control on AMC's nickel, found an average grade of 0.62% compared to the earlier Alex Stewart Laboratory (ASL) results of 0.63%, a difference of about 2.3%.

In terms of external control on copper, both SGS and ASL reported an average copper grade of 0.18% at a COG grade of 0.10% copper.

Robin Young, chief executive of Amur Minerals, said, "With the acquisition of the final Quality Assurance / Quality Control analytical results from SGS Minerals, we are now fully assured that the 2017 independent Alex Stewart Laboratory analytical results meet industry standards and can be used in the calculation of an updated Mineral Resource Estimate. With this milestone, we have engaged RPM Global to update the February 2017 Mineral Resource at Kun-Manie."

"With drilling having confirmed mineralisation along over 3.6 kilometres of length where only 1.4 kilometres had been previously drill identified, we anticipate a substantial increase in the nickel-copper resource of February 2017. Going into the initiated RPM update, the area was defined to contain about 258,000 nickel tonnes or about a third of our global 770,000-tonne nickel resource inventory," Young added.

As of 0920 GMT, shares had edged forward 3.63% to 7.56p.