Berg Aukas22 May 2018 14:57
On 5 February 2018, Weatherly announced that it had initiated an update of the PFS for Berg Aukas, which has now been completed by independent South African consultants, Minxcon (Pty) Ltd ("Minxcon"), being the same consulting firm which prepared the original PFS report, in 2014. This update examined the impact of improved metal prices and an update of capital and operating costs for the project. The mining, processing and product marketing assumptions were not revised for this update, and the resource and reserve estimates also remain unchanged.
The updated study estimates that the overall project NPV (for 100% of Berg Aukas and using a discount rate of 10%) has increased to US$74 million post-tax and that the post-tax IRR has increased to 35%. These outcomes were estimated using a zinc price of US$3260 per tonne, a lead price of US$2,490 per tonne and an exchange rate of 12.9 NAD/USD, which were prevailing six month average spot values in mid-March 2018. No value was attributed to the vanadium content. The total capital cost estimated by Minxcon is US$54.1 million.