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- Minbos Resources (MNB) has upgraded its mineral resource estimate for the high-grade Cabinda Phosphate Project in Angola
- The Cabinda Project is 85 per cent owned by Minbos and hosts the high-grade Cácata deposit
- With the upgrade complete, Cácata now boasts a total measured, indicated and inferred resource of 8.4 million tonnes at 29.6 per cent phosphorus pentoxide
- The updated resource estimate will now be used to support open pit mine optimisation, design and economic analysis
- Shares in Minbos Resources are steady at $0.16 each as of 3:30 pm AEDT
Minbos Resources (MNB) has upgraded its mineral resource estimate for the high-grade Cabinda Phosphate Project in Angola.
Owned 85 per cent by Minbos and 15 per cent by a local partner, the Cabinda Project is Minbos’s first step in alleviating poverty for millions of subsistence farmers in the region who use minimal applied plant nutrition products or soil ameliorants.
Minbos said it intends to mine phosphate rock from the project’s Cácata deposit, before being shipped to Porto de Caio where a granulation plant will be built to produce Enhanced Phosphate Rock (EPR) granules.
According to today’s announcement, the Cácata deposit now boasts a total measured, indicated and inferred resource of 8.4 million tonnes at 29.6 per cent phosphorus pentoxide. That compares to an earlier estimate released in December 2013, which put the resource at five million tonnes at 23 per cent phosphorus pentoxide.
Located in a narrow graben roughly 4.5 kilometres long and 400 metres wide, the Cácata deposit is structurally simple, which Minbos said makes it amenable to free-dig mining without the need for drilling and blasting.
Notably, no new raw data was incorporated in the upgraded resource estimate — prepared by SRK Consulting — except for Lidar topography, which Minbos said has made a minimal “but favourable” impact.
In compiling its report, SRK said there were “reasonable prospects” for eventual economic extraction based on a recent pit optimisation exercise. However, the firm stressed that the resource estimate did not demonstrate any formal economic viability.
“The company anticipates that a more continuous grade profile . . . will deliver significant enhancements to the mine planning and production schedules, which are currently being generated by Orelogy Mine Consulting as part of the updated engineering study,” chief executive Lindsay Reed said.
The updated resource estimate will now be used to support open pit mine optimisation, design and economic analysis. This work will in turn result in an ore reserve estimate for the Cácata deposit, which is expected in the first quarter of next year.
Shares in Minbos Resources are steady at $0.16 each as of 3:30 pm AEDT.
