Carawine Resources (ASX:CWX) and Black Canyon are continuing to grow their emerging Flanagan Bore manganese project with a new resource estimate boosting the JV’s manganese inventory by 64%.

A new estimate has come after a big infill and resource expansion drill out, boosting mineral resources to 171Mt at 10.3% Mn for 18Mt of manganese metal. That’s an additional 67Mt of ore and 7Mt of contained manganese over previous estimates.

That includes 116Mt at 10.2% Mn at the FB3 deposit, 45% of it measured and 55% indicated, and 56Mt at 10.4% at LR1, with 90% of that measured.

The fact that 100Mt of the resource at a grade of 10.4% Mn is in the highest confidence measured category of resource bodes well for the potential of the explorers to post ore reserves for upcoming feasibility studies.

An ore reserve is the quantity of metal-bearing ore that can be economically mined.

A significant higher grade portion of the resource includes 40Mt at 13% Mn, 63% measured and 37% indicated.

This means the JV will be able to deliver a higher grade feed during the critical early years of the mine when it is working to repay capital costs.

The new resource estimate confirms Flanagan Bore as a deposit of globally significant scale in the Tier 1 mining jurisdiction and region of WA’s resource rich Pilbara.

Located 400km southeast of Port Hedland, the area is already known as a manganese producing region, with mines like Butcherbird and Woodie Woodie.

The commodity is a key part of the steel supply chain, but is also growing in significance as a battery metal as one of the ingredients of the NCM lithium-ion battery used in EVs like the Tesla Model 3.

Multi-decade minMininging operation

Flanagan Bore is currently held 51-49 by Black Canyon (ASX:BCA) and Carawine Resources (ASX:CWX), with BCA currently planning to spend $2.5m on exploration to up its stake to 75%.

Currently free carried, CWX will be able to elect afterwards whether to keep its stake and fund a quarter of the ongoing costs at Flanagan Bore or sell down.

Either way, Carawine stands to benefit from what is emerging as a major, multi-decade source of manganese for steelmakers and battery producers.

“Our Joint Venture with Black Canyon is the standout success story from our JV partnerships to date,” Carawine managing director David Boyd said.

“Today’s substantial Mineral Resource update for the Flanagan Bore Project comes on the back of the recent mining lease application and advancement of feasibility study test work, all following from the positive Scoping Study results released by Black Canyon earlier this year.

“We’re looking forward to tracking the project’s progress over coming months as Black Canyon continues its work at Flanagan Bore, and across the other Joint Venture tenements.”

It provides another string to the company’s bow alongside exploration efforts in the Paterson Province and Fraser Range regions of WA.

The latter includes the high grade Hercules deposit at its Tropicana North gold project, where CWX has outlined a 71,000oz gold resource at 4.8g/t to the north of AngloGold Ashanti and Regis Resources’ multi-million ounce Tropicana gold mine.

At Flanagan Bore, JV operator BCA is planning to keep adding to the value proposition at no cost to CWX shareholders, including a robust mine feasibility study, exploration and scoping work on producing high purity manganese sulphate for the EV industry.

BCA executive director Brendan Cummins said there remains significant exploration upside with limited drilling along several kilometres of the prospective mineralised horizon.

“Our previously announced Scoping Study, based on the superseded Mineral Resource, evaluated Production Targets of 36.1 Mt @ 11.7% Mn over a 20-year mine life, generating a pre-tax NPV8 of $134M and pre-tax IRR of 67%,” he said.

“Today’s updated Mineral Resource and internal higher grade zone therefore bodes well for an improved, multi-decade mining operation at Flanagan Bore.”

“The deposits have continued to show a high level of continuity, with more than half of the updated MRE now within the highest confidence Measured category.

“With the increased scale and confidence in the Mineral Resource, (Black Canyon) can focus on development and Feasibility related studies while in parallel, progress our approval pathway for the recent Mining Lease application.”

 

 

This article was developed in collaboration with Carawine Resources (ASX:CWX), 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. 

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