Tando ready to start drilling for vanadium in South Africa with grant of mining right
Date:Jul 27, 2018
Tando Resources has announced the grant of the mining right for the SPD vanadium project in South Africa that paves the way for it to start drilling.
And the company is wasting no time, with drilling contractors already engaged and set to mobilise shortly.
The phase one program will begin in August and comprise 18 holes for 1650m at the SPD deposit, which currently hosts a resource of 513 million tonnes at 0.78 per cent vanadium pentoxide (V2O5).
Drilling is aimed at converting the resource, which is currently known as a “foreign resource”, to the JORC Code.
JORC refers to the mining industry’s official code for reporting exploration results, mineral resources and ore reserves, managed by the Australasian Joint Ore Reserves Committee.
Phase one will also include the first holes to be drilled at the shallow, high-grade vanadium pipes which sit within a 3km radius of the SPD deposit.
Likeness to past producing mine
Tando’s recently acquired SPD project has shown early similarities to the formerly producing Kennedy’s Vale mine.
The company previously reported high grades of over 2 per cent from magnetite pipes that are similar to the magnetite pipe once mined by Xstrata at the Kennedy’s Vale mine.
The Kennedy’s Vale mine lies along strike to the north from SPD, which is located in an established vanadium production hub in the Bushveld Complex.
Kennedy’s Vale, which was mothballed in 2004 after it ran out of ore, produced around 6000 tons per year of vanadium pentoxide and 2400 tons per year of ferro-vanadium.
Tando says the high vanadium grades at SPD highlight the strong potential for the pipes to underpin a simple, low-cost, high-grade direct shipping ore operation with a shorter development timetable.