Eurasia Mining Plc (“Eurasia” or the “Company”), the palladium, platinum, rhodium, iridium and gold producing company, is pleased to announce a tier-1 scale JORC Mineral Resource Estimate (“MRE”) by Wardell Armstrong International (“WAI”) at Nittis-Kumuzhya-Travyanaya (“NKT”) nickel dominant nickel-copper-PGM mine formerly operated by Norilsk Nickel.
NKT is located within the license area held by TGK, Eurasia’s 80% owned subsidiary in Kola, immediately to the north of the TGK-owned West Nittis open pit deposit already licenced for mining, where the mining plan has now been developed for the life of mine.
Highlights:
· Tier-1 scale: 305Kt of Nickel, 143Kt of Copper, 57 tons of PGM and Gold (11.2Moz of Platinum equivalent) have been estimated by WAI as JORC-compliant resources for an underground mining operation.
· Nickel is the main metal comprising half of the value in the metal basket on a Net Smelter Royalty (“NSR”) basis.
· Although significantly lower metal recoveries have conservatively been assumed for the MRE by WAI, the JORC-compliant Nickel resource has exceeded the Nickel resource registered in the Russian State Cadastre of Mines for NKT (please refer to RNS dated 4 December 2019). Metal recoveries remain a significant upside for the next NKT MRE update.
· About 2/3 of the resources have been defined as reserves under Russian classification by Norilsk Nickel, however the drill core and the trenches have only been analysed for the base metals (Nickel and Copper) and have not been analysed for platinum group metals (“PGM”) thus limiting the classification to inferred under the JORC Code due to the application of regression formulas for PGM. Once all the PGM assays have been completed, this data will be used for re-estimation and re-classification providing additional upside for the next NKT MRE update.
· In order to further upgrade the resource Eurasia has engaged with SGS and Alex Stewart International for primary and secondary controls of the PGM assays on the historical drill core and the trenches by Severonickel / Norilsk Nickel as well as on the additional confirmatory drilling just done by Eurasia on NKT.
· The NKT nickel-copper-PGM ore used to be mined and shipped about 1 km distance to Severonickel, the world’s largest nickel processing plant. Thus, the NKT area is well served with the infrastructure required for the relaunch of mining and processing and the tailings are planned to be used as backfill to the old NKT mine developed in the past following the best practices in ESG and saving on the tailing storage facility (“TSF”) capital expenditure.
· The Competent Person’s Report (“CPR”) has been prepared by WAI covering the open pit part of the NKT as well as the underground part of the NKT.
· Multiple options for the relaunch have been considered and several case studies have been analysed. A brownfield relaunch like NKT and Nyud is generally a faster and simpler process than a greenfield mine launch.
· The net present value (“NPV”) using an 8.33% discount rate for the underground part of the NKT project is $1.2bn under the WAI price forecast and $1.7bn under spot prices. Work on the open pit part is in progress and the NPV of that part will be announced separately.
· The wireframe and the block modelling of the high-grade Nickel, Copper and PGM vein part of the NKT is in progress and represents another upside to the MRE and the NPV.
· The MRE under the JORC Code by WAI on other deposits including on Nyud, another Nickel dominant mine, that (like NKT) used to be in production, will be released separately.
The 38-page summary of the CPR by Wardell Armstrong International is available as an embedded link on this RNS and on Eurasia’s website at:
https://www.eurasiamining.co.uk/investors/technical-reports
http://www.rns-pdf.londonstockexchange.com/rns/8166V_1-2021-12-15.pdf
Dr Phil Newall, BSc, PhD, CEng, FIMMM, Director at WAI and Che Osmond, BSc (Hons), MSc, CGeol, FGS, EurGeol, Technical Director at WAI have reviewed the update and consent to the inclusion of the exploration information in the form and context in which it appears here. They are Competent Persons for the purposes of the reporting of these results.
Christian Schaffalitzky, Executive Chairman of Eurasia commented: ” The Directors are jubilant to complete an important milestone of our first of a series of JORC mineral resource estimates, that the WAI team has been working on since April this year. We are delighted that a relaunch of the NKT nickel-dominant mine generates a significant NPV of $1.2-1.7bn under various price scenarios. Furthermore, the identification of an open pit part as well as near-surface high-grade veins of the NKT area represent further upsides. We continue to observe significant interest in nickel dominant mines, especially in the ones closer to production like the NKT brownfield relaunch “.
James Nieuwenhuys, CEO and Managing Director of Eurasia commented: “The Board members are delighted by the outcome of the hard work done by the Eurasia and Wardell Armstrong International teams. NKT’s nickel and copper resource is well drilled, trenched and tested and requires further minor assaying for PGM by-products to upgrade the resources into higher confidence categories. While we continue to advance our projects with excellent existing infrastructure, now with added help of state owned Rosgeo and ERDC, our strategy remains the same: delivering on our promise to maximise the value for Eurasia shareholders “.
A copy of this announcement is also available on Eurasia’s website at:
https://www.eurasiamining.co.uk/investors/news-announcements.
For further information, please contact:
Eurasia Mining Plc
+44 (0) 20 7932 0418
Christian Schaffalitzky / Keith Byrne
