African Eagle resource upgrade beats expectations

African Eagle spread its wings and took off Tuesday after tripling the tonnage and more than doubling the contained nickel equivalent at its flagship Dutwa nickel project in Tanzania.The JORC inferred resource for Ngasamo (western deposit) rises to 35.3m tonnes at average grade 0.9% nickel, while Wamangola (main deposit) is 56.8m tonnes at average grade 0.86% nickel, givin a global resource of 92.1m tonnes at 0.92% nickel equivalent."The new resource estimate exceeds our expectations," said managing director Mark Parker who called the increase in contained nickel equivalent from 345,000 to 845,000 tonnes "a significant step forward in our feasibility work at Dutwa"."The results also show that the Ngasamo deposit shares Dutwa's high silica, low iron, low magnesium chemistry, which is the key to the low acid consumption seen in the metallurgical testing."Independent consultants Snowden are now using data from AE's extensive drilling programmes over the past 12 months to upgrade the resources at Wamangola from JORC inferred to indicated category.Parker told ShareCast earlier this month that Dutwa is "one of the most exciting nickel projects being developed today" and is "shaping up to be a company-making deposit". Then, he predicted "big upside and lots of newsflow" over the next three months.