Mt Carbine, Far North Queensland Australia

Target: Tungsten
Tenements: ML4867 & ML4919

Location: The Mt Carbine project is located 120km by sealed road north west of the port of Cairns in Far North Queensland. The project is on granted Mining Leases with power, water, tailings storage and Environmental Approval in place for the first stage of production.

Background:

Speciality Metals International Limited (formerly Carbine Tungsten Limited) plans to be a pre-eminent Australian tungsten producer from the historic Mt Carbine tungsten mine in Far North Queensland. More...

Mt Carbine was discovered at the end of the 19th Century, and was a major tungsten producer in the past. The deposit is still relatively unexplored and there is considerable exploration potential for new tungsten mineralisation in the Mining Leases and Icon's surrounding exploration tenements. When it last operated between 1973 and 1987, the Mt Carbine mine produced exceptionally high grade concentrate, and was in the lowest quartile of cost of production for global tungsten producers.

Resource:

The Mt Carbine tungsten mineralisation is similar to several other large tungsten deposits around the world, for example some of the deposits in southern China, Spain and southern UK, in that it is low grade (the grade of the inferred hard-rock resource at Mt Carbine is 0.14%WO₃ at a cut-off of 0.05% WO₃, and comparable with other large tungsten deposits of a similar geological style).

The hard rock mineralisation is open at depth and to the north of the present resource; historic workings persist for several hundred metres north of the northern-most exploration drill hole. Although it is low grade, the Mt Carbine mineralisation is very amenable to ore sorting, a pre-concentration process which retrieves a small tonnage of high grade mill feed from a large tonnage of low grade ore, at low cost and with minimal loss of valuable mineral.

Geology/Geophysics:

Mt Carbine was discovered at the end of the 19th Century, and was a major tungsten producer in the past. The deposit is still relatively unexplored and there is considerable exploration potential for new tungsten mineralisation in the Mining Leases and Icon's surrounding exploration tenements. The present Mining Leases contain tailings dams (~ 2million tonnes at 0.1% WO₃), a low grade mineralisation stockpile (historical records indicate ~12 million tonnes, which from Carbine Tungsten Limited's recent bulk sampling has a grade of 0.075% WO₃), and ~ 6 million tonnes of mineralised ore sorting rejects.

Icon completed its first drilling program and resampling of historic drill core Mt Carbine in 2010, resulting in the announcement of a maiden JORC compliant inferred resource estimate of 39 million tonnes of hard-rock mineralisation at a grade of 0.14% WO₃ at a cut-off of 0.05% WO₃, adjacent to the existing open pit.

Forward Program:

Ore sorting was successfully used at Mt Carbine between 1973 and 1986, however there have been major advances in the type and efficiency of ore sorters since they were last used at Mt Carbine. During late 2010, Carbine Tungsten Limited carried out trials using a state-of-the-art transmission X-Ray ore sorter on bulk samples taken from the ~12 million tonne low grade stockpile left untreated by the previous mining operation. The results were highly encouraging, with the sorting achieving a conservative upgrade of more than 8 times the bulk sample grade.

The results are regarded as a “game changer” for the redevelopment of Mt Carbine. Following on from the tailings re-treatment, Carbine Tungsten Limited is now planning to re-treat the low grade stockpile over a period of 4-6 years at a production rate of ~100 tonnes WO₃ per month, before it commences hard rock mining.

The dramatic reduction of the amount of rock to be milled for final product results in major reductions in capital expenditure (the mill is much smaller) and operating costs per unit of product. The net result is that the Mt Carbine project now has a long project life and a much reduced project risk.