| January
29, 2003
TERTIARY EXPECTS RESULTS OF GHURAYYAH
SCOPING STUDY AT END OF FEBRUARY
- Specialist
Merchant Bank Providing Financial Modelling Component
- Commercial
Plant At Rosendal Could Achieve 70p.c. Tantalum Recovery
- Additional
IOCG Targets Being Acquired In Finland
The results
of the economic and technical scoping study on the Tertiary Minerals’
Ghurayyah tantalum/rare earth deposit in Saudi Arabia are expected
at the end of next month, the company says in its end-December quarterly.
It is being undertaken by London-based St Barbara Consulting.
The financial modelling component of the study will be carried out
with input from Merchant Bridge Limited, a merchant bank specialising
in the Middle East, says Tertiary. That company’s contribution
will receive financial support from British Offset, the joint initiative
of the UK Ministry of Defence and BAE SYSTEMS to support new projects
in Saudi Arabia through project financing assistance and soft loans.
The study is based on the success of Tertiary’s metallurgical
testwork which developed a flow sheet using standard flotation and
magnetic separation to produce a concentrate from Ghurayyah ore.
The grade of this concentrate shows a ten-fold improvement on that
produced by the previous work on which all technical and financial
evaluations of Ghurayyah were based. British Offset also provided
financial assistance for this testwork.
Ghurayyah contains an Inferred Minerals Resource of 385m tonnes
grading 245g/t tantalum pentoxide, 2,840g/t niobium pentoxide and
8,915g/t zirconium oxide, and is reportedly the largest tantalum
deposit in the world.
Turning to its more modest-scale Rosendal tantalum project in Finland,
Tertiary says recent testwork on the ore using commercial gravity
separation equipment produced a high-grade concentrate (32p.c.-43p.c.
tantalum pentoxide) with acceptable recoveries (60p.c.-77p.c.).
CSMA Consultants Ltd, who carried out the tests, estimates a commercial-scale
operation could recover 70p.c. of the contained tantalum.
Last October, Tertiary embarked upon a new exploration initiative
to search for Olympic Dam style iron oxide-copper-gold (IOCG) deposits
in Finland and announced that it had secured eight targets, including
former producing iron ore mines. Such deposits are typically large
and have become one of the large deposit types sought by major mining
companies today.
During the quarter, the company commissioned the Geological Survey
of Finland to compile available data on these eight targets. This
work highlighted a number of other areas over which Tertiary has
now applied for claims or claim reservations, effectively doubling
the number of targets. It also revealed that a significant amount
of drill core remains from previous iron exploration and mining
within all of these IOCG target areas. Much of this needs to be
better documented and organised and most of the core has never been
evaluated for copper-gold mineralisation. Tertiary says it will
initiate a programme of re-logging and re-assaying next month.
Further Information:
Patrick Cheetham, Executive Chairman Tertiary Minerals. Tel: 01625-626203
Ron Marshman/John Greenhalgh, City of London PR Limited. Tel: 020-7628-5518
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