Lindian Resources says it has made significant progress on the optimum design for its processing plant at the company’s Kangankunde rare earths project in Malawi, while the mine design and planning are being scoped.
The stage-one plant is based on processing an initial throughput of 220,000 tonnes of material per annum to produce a monazite concentrate before potentially expanding to 440,000 tonnes a year.
Kangankunde is considered one of the world’s biggest rare earths operations outside China and hosts an outdated resource of 2.53 million tonnes grading 4.24 per cent total rare earth oxides for 107,000 tonnes of contained rare earths when using a cut-off grade of 3.5 per cent. It is a carbonatite-hosted system with mineralisation exposed at surface and is still open at depth.
The company’s phase-one mine development drill program is complete, with 91 drill holes for a total of 14,163m. The final 2000 assays have been impacted by a logistical delay and are now expected to be completed by the end of this month.
Management says it expects to deliver a maiden mineral resource update under JORC 2012 guidelines based on its latest drill results by next month.
Lindian Resources chief executive officer Alistair Stephens said: “Lindian has multiple work streams advancing including engineering development, ongoing drilling and assaying, metallurgical work and now multiple Stage 1 project design and development activities. Having a fully permitted project gives us a major strategic advantage and facilitates rapid development of this project.”
Management says it is already planning an infill drill campaign that will aim to increase resource confidence from an inferred to an indicated category for initial production and project assessment, with the program expected to kick off next month. Two additional deep core holes have also been drilled to test for mineralisation below the current resource area. Results from the deeper drill program are expected next quarter, in addition to an updated exploration target.
The company also expects its current metallurgical testwork to be completed by the end of August. In April, Lindian received positive signs from early-phase metallurgical testwork at Kangankunde, with results showing concentrate grades of about 60 per cent rare earths oxide. The test results show that water-only, low-cost gravity and magnetic beneficiation techniques are suitable for the mineralisation found at the operation.
A civil works program is being defined for the design, engineering and construction of the company’s proposed processing plant, mine laydown area, water supply and storage, power, weighbridge, 5km access road, workshops, administration building and tailings storage. Planning for future expansion is set to start in November.
Development of a stage-two plant capable of processing 1.5 million tonnes per annum is expected to begin next year, while the CAPEX and OPEX for stage one are likely to be finalised early next year.
Considering Lindian only began works on the ground at Kangankunde eight months ago, to be planning mining and processing capabilities at the operation shows how seriously the company is taking its Malawi operations.
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By Michael Philipps
