Bryah ups Gabanintha nickel, copper and cobalt resource by 119pc

Bryah has upgraded resources at its Gabanintha project in Western Australia that includes an indicated component within planned open pits.

The resource at Gabanintha now stands at 31.3 million tonnes grading 761 parts per million (ppm) nickel, 210ppm copper and 228ppm cobalt, or a contained resource of 23,770t of nickel, 6,556t of copper and 7,116t of cobalt.

That’s a 119 per cent increase from the previous estimate.

Importantly, Bryah Resources (ASX:BYH) notes that this includes a higher confidence indicated resource of 17.7Mt at 760ppm nickel, 205ppm copper and 229ppm cobalt, situated within the high-grade vanadium zone (HG10) within the three planned open pits of the Australian Vanadium Project.

This part of the resource is expected to be processed through Australian Vanadium’s (ASX:AVL) 1.6 million tonne per annum crushing, milling and beneficiation plant.

“Metallurgical test work from 2018 indicated that a significant non-magnetic nickel-copper-cobalt rich sulphide tailings stream would come from the plant following magnetic separation of the vanadium-bearing magnetite concentrate,” managing director Neil Marston said.

“We know the vanadium ore beneficiation process effectively concentrates the sulphide minerals in the tail, enabling further concentration by flotation methods.

“In addition to producing base metals concentrates with up to 6.3% combined nickel, copper and cobalt, a significant gold assay of 23.4 g/t gold was also reported by Bryah in one of the flotation test samples. The presence of gold requires and warrants further investigation.

“A further round of flotation tests is being planned to better understand the potential grade and economics of producing a nickel-copper-cobalt rich sulphide concentrate.”

A shared resource

Bryah holds mineral rights for all minerals, excluding vanadium, titanium, iron ore, cobalt, chromium, uranium, lithium, tantalum and manganese, which are held by Australian Vanadium.

Australian Vanadium is also a 7.14 per cent shareholder of Bryah.

Both companies are working together to maximise the recovery of metals from the deposit with Bryah taking the lead on the base metal recovery circuit.

Test work to date has resulted in average recoveries of 62 per cent copper, 34 per cent nickel, 59 per cent cobalt and 93 per cent sulphur to the non-magnetic tails.

Further magnetic separation test work is planned to understand the variation in results and refine the proportion of each metal reporting to the non-magnetic tail.

Australian Vanadium is currently progressing its namesake project through a bankable feasibility study.

Future activity

Over the coming months, Bryah plans to carry out analysis of additional drilling samples for gold and platinum group elements (PGE).

It will also collect appropriate representative samples from historical drill archive samples for flotation test work that will establish the likely sulphide concentrate yields and grades of nickel, copper and cobalt, as well as gold and PGEs.

Work will also be carried out a pre-feasibility study into the capital and operational costs of adding the sulphide flotation circuit to the project processing plant.

This article was developed in collaboration with Bryah Resources, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.