Exploration Activities Mt Carbine Expansion EQR completed a BFS on 13 December 2021 using updated Resource and Reserve Statements completed in September 2021, with an updated Reserve Statement completed in September 2022. Measured Group has designed an updated pit shell that covers the first 4 years of open cut mining. A summary of these statements can be found within the Mineral Resource and Reserve Statement on page 34. The updated pit has a two stage design extracting 14.4Mt of rock for 3.5Mt of Ore at 0.33% WO3 grade. The Stage 1 pit relates to the first year of mining, where the Company begins mining from the bottom of the existing pit while stripping for a larger pit is underway. Stage 2 Pit follows with a further 3 years of open cut mining to give a current total mine design of 9 years (including the LGS Reserves). A further Stage 3 pit expansion is under conceptual design, with a drill program needed to complete the drill out of 43% of the volume of this large extension. The increase in reserves is primarily due to the addition of a ‘Halo’ of lower grade ore at 0.26% WO3 grade that surrounds the high grade veins and has added an additional 250,000 mtu units to the mining schedule. A reduction in the original BFS strip ratio from 11.1:1 down to 3.1:1 is due to the larger shaped ore body allowing for the planning of larger trucks to affect a reduction in mining costs. The excellent price of tungsten with APT pricing in the US$345-$350 range, at time of reporting, in combination with the excellent results of the XRT Sorting justifies the cut off grade to be lowered from 0.15% WO3 in the Resource Statement dated September 2021 down to 0.05% WO3 for the Resource Statement of August 2022. The effect of using this lower cut off grade increases the contained reserves in the BFS pit by 29% (refer ASX Announcement “Material Increase in Mt Carbine Reserves” dated 16 September 2022). A further drilling campaign conducted in March 2022 targeted the western pit boundary to increase the confidence level of this mineralisation from Inferred Resources into Indicated Resources. The holes were drilled within the Mt Carbine ML’s 4867 & 4919 license boundaries. This drilling consisted of 10 holes for 2,121.9m in the locations depicted below at the western end of the BFS Pit. See Appendix 1 Table for drill results. Figure 4: Map of 9 out of 10 Hole Drilling Program in 2022. The results of the 10 hole diamond drilling program were used to then update the Resource Statement released in August 2022 (refer Appendix 1 “Summary of Significant Results for 10 Drill Holes Drilled in 2022”). The success of ore sorting has enabled grades similar to the LGS (LGS – 10.26Mt @ 0.075% WO3) to be economic. Operating and Financial Review continued 22 EQ Resources Limited Annual Report 2022
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjE2NDg3