Melville Bay - extracts from First Equity's of 15/063 Aug 2020 10:29
Melville Bay, Greenland – Iron-Ore (51%) – MEL 2017-41
This small 17 sq. km licence importantly includes an area upon which a JORC Inferred
Resource of 67m tonnes at 31.4% iron-ore was defined by a previous licence holder
in 2011 over the Havik prospect. The other licence stake holder is a private mineral
resources investment group.
The project lies within the Committee Geological Belt which runs from Baffin Island
in Canada into north-west Greenland, and includes the operating iron-ore mine at
Mary River, which has produced since 2014, with a reported resource of 350m tonnes
at an average grade of 64% iron-ore which is of Direct Shipping Ore (DSO) quality.
Previous testwork has shown that the magnetite ore which makes up the 67m tonne
resource can be readily upgraded to 70% iron-ore using conventional magnetic
separation.
The resource report for Melville Bay included, in addition to the Inferred resource of
67m tonnes, an exploration target in the range of 158 to 474m tonnes with a grade
of between 27% and 47% Fe. This shows the potential to significantly increase the
defined resources at Melville Bay.
The next stage of work planned by Alba will be to commission an independent desktop
scoping study to evaluate Melville Bay’s economic and technical feasibility. Further
exploration activities will focus both on expanding the existing magnetite resource
but also targeting economic quantities of high-grade DSO material analogous to the
Mary River deposit. In that respect, it is noted that past drilling at Melville Bay
included a drill hole at the De Dodes West target grading 58.84% iron-ore over 3.6
metres, and a drill hole at the Haematite Nunatek target grading 68.18% over 0.6
metres...
Melville Bay – Although a JORC resource is defined for Melville Bay, we would need
to see the details of some form of economic or technical study to be able to apply a
valuation. To reflect the benefit of a reasonably sized JORC resource and what
appears to be plenty of exploration upside we have valued the project at x3 its
balance sheet sum of £82K.