Nordic Mines updates the Mineral Resources for the Laiva mine (A translation from Swedish)
The Mineral Resources have been updated after two years of operations at the Laiva mine in Finland and a preliminary economic assessment has been prepared.
As a part of the corporate reorganization work with establishing a future profitable business plan and finding a strategic partner or new financing, Nordic Mines has reached a first stage of reestimating the mineral resources at the Laiva deposit in Finland. This work has been completed with the assistance of the independent consultancy firm SRK Consulting (UK) Limited ("SRK").
The updated Mineral Resources estimates prepared by SRK are accordingly:
| MINERAL RESOURCES AT LAIVA, NOV 2013 | |||
| In-situ Tonnes of ore | Gold g/tonne | Kg gold | |
| Indicated Mineral Resources (cut-off 0.6 g/tonne) | 15 422 000 | 1,49 | 21 000 |
| Inferred Mineral Resources (cut-off 0.6 g/tonne) | 3 156 000 | 2,28 | 6 550 |
| Note: as compared to CSA`s 2012 statement of Mineral Resources, the new 2013 statement is constrained within an economic pit shell at a gold price of 1 300€/ounce. This complies with the JORC code requirement to show the Resources have "reasonable prospects of eventual economic extraction". | |||
The technical report can be seen at http://www.nordicmines.com/en/technical-reports
Due to restrained time available within the corporate reorganization period, the Company has chosen to share the updated Mineral Resource information despite SRK`s full report not yet being completed.
The next stage is to reestimate the Ore Reserve. This work is still in progress. However, SRK has prepared a mining Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) using the reporting guidelines of the JORC Code for the mine optimisation and planning. SRK is using the above Resource model with a cut-off grade of 0.6 gram gold per tonne and on the basis of a maximum plant production of 2 Million tonnes per year (Mtpa) after an initial ramp-up from 1.6 Mtpa of production when mining restarts in 2014. This results in a remaining life of mine of 5 years, producing approximately 10.6 million tonnes (Mt) ore at a head grade of 1.3 gram gold per tonne. Further engineering and planning work is on-going in this regard, which is expected to result in a formal statement of Ore Reserves.
The previously reported Ore Reserve estimate, updated by CSA Global Ltd ("CSA") in November 2012, had a cut-off grade 0.5 gram per tonne and 15.2 Mt of ore with 1.6 gram gold per tonne.
The reasons the updated PEA is reporting lower tonnage and grade of ore is that the new Resource model is using wider and more diluted mineralization zones, which means a lower planned head grade with a lower waste/ore stripping ratio. This means that a smaller amount of waste needs to be mined for the equivalent amount of ore. The PEA is also based on updated mining and processing costs that with the lower head grades in the ore zones, impact the amount of available ore to be mined.