Artemis Resources has wrapped itself a tidy little package for the upcoming Christmas holiday with the ASX listed company defining a shallow, nickel-copper mineral resource in the indicated category for its Radio Hill nickel mine near Karratha in WA.
The new resource sits at 1.15 million tonnes grading 0.52% nickel, 0.73% copper and 277ppm cobalt, which contains 5980 tonnes of nickel, 8395 tonnes of copper and 318 tonnes of cobalt.
Notably, this is a standalone resource that is independent of any previously reported resources.
Radio Hill sits on a fully approved mining lease that includes Artemis’ processing plant and the historic Radio Hill underground deposit that was processed through the plant prior to being placed into care and maintenance in September 2008 due to low commodity prices.
Management said that with the refurbishment of the Radio Hill flotation concentrator, the plant could successfully recover fresh sulphide copper and nickel mineralisation as saleable concentrates with metallurgical recoveries of about 80%.
Artemis Executive Director Ed Mead said: “This updip extension to the historic Radio Hill underground represents a new, shallow nickel – copper resource approximately 400m from the Radio Hill plant.
“Further resource development work is required to determine the optimum means to monetise the project and this work will be reviewed in 2019.”
The company currently has approved throughput capacity of 500,000 tonnes per annum of gold ores for the Radio Hill plant. This is the first stage of its plan to expand the multi-metal capability of the plant.
Artemis also expects to update mineral resources for its flagship Carlow Castle gold-copper-cobalt project in the first quarter of 2019.
By Matt Birney
