LONDON (Alliance News) - Richland Resources Ltd Wednesday said it has updated the resource estimate for the Capricorn Sapphire mine in Australia, adding 8.0 million carats to the overall resource thought to be within the mine.
Richland has defined a new area of potential resources at the mine, which lies in Queensland, and said the area will be the main focus for mining operations over the next 12 months as production from the mine continues to ramp-up.
The miner spent the final quarter of last year and the first half of 2016 updating the geological model at the mine and to further expand the resource estimate.
"Following 12 months of focussed geological work, the Capricorn Sapphire mine now has a meaningful additional, independently audited, JORC resource estimate and, perhaps almost as important, a more detailed mine plan in place with a far greater understanding of the geology and mineralisation of the deposit," said Andrew Cunningham, an independent geological consultant that was involved in the work.
Prior to the update, the Capricorn Sapphire mine had a JORC-compliant historical measured resource of 109.0 million carats, but that has fallen to 107.5 million carats as Richland has mined and produced 1.5 million carats from the mine since July 2015.
An additional JORC-compliant inferred resource of 8.0 million carats has now been added, thought to lie within ore graded at 10.0 grammes of gold per tonne.
To put the grade of the inferred resource into perspective, the measured category has a grade of 20.0 carats per tonne of ore, but holds a different cut-off grade to the new inferred resource, and in the final quarter of 2015, the average grade was 14 carats per tonne of ore.
The final quarter of 2015 was the first full quarter of production from the mine, with 720,000 carats of sapphires produced and 52,266 tonnes of sapphire-bearing alluvials mined and processed.
That takes the total measured and inferred mineral resource at the mine to 115.5 million carats of sapphire and corundum.
Measured resources can be seen as having a high degree of accuracy and confidence of being extracted. Sitting below that category is indicated resources followed by inferred resources, which will need to be developed in order to be upgraded.
"The Capricorn sapphire project remains on schedule to meet its ramp-up targets in 2016, and our geological delineation programme allows the company to improve and refine its mine programme and scheduling," said Richland.
Richland shares were trading up 4.0% to 1.69 pence per share on Wednesday morning.
By Joshua Warner; joshuawarner@alliancenews.com; @JoshAlliance
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