Amur Minerals Corporation (LON:AMC) Chief Executive Officer Robin Young caught up with DirectorsTalk to discuss their latest drilling update
Q1: Now Robin, you’ve put out a drilling update this morning for the MKF drilling programme at Kun-Manie which had some excellent results, can you talk us through the highlights?
A1: Yes, one of the key things about the project itself is that we have remained focussed on the largest and most significant deposits that we have on the site and that is the MKF, the Maly Kurumkon/Flangovy project. That area alone contains about $4.8 billion worth of in situ metal and about approximately 80% of that contained in a flat line pipe like structure so this year when we began the programme we really were focussed on drilling a total of 15,000 metres and the intent was to convert inferred resources, which had reported to us by SRK earlier in the year, to indicated itself and that would give us an increase from the current 285,000 tonnes to about 360,000 tonnes, by converting this we can then add to the resource base. We also undertook that if we discovered any new mineralisation that we would immediately drill it to an indicated density therefore allowing us not to have to return to an area because of the logistical supporters, it’s pretty complicated in the rugged terrain where we work and in so doing, we believe that Maly Kurumkon/Flangovy deposit itself is quite capable of supporting a reserve of say 6-8 years and what’s key about this time period is that’s a typical period where a company pays back its construction loans.
Q2: You’ve completed the metallurgical drill programme almost 3 months ahead of schedule, what does this mean for the company and what are the objectives for 2016?
A2: It was a pretty big leap for us, we really had the advantage of starting this year 3 weeks earlier than typical and as a result we began drilling as to infill inferred resources but as we worked through the infill resource drilling and discovery of a 400 metre extension further to the east of our western deposit we were able to free up one of the rigs and begin to accumulate this bulk metallurgical sample. What’s really important about this sample is that it will be used for us to define the metallurgical recoveries along the strike of the deposit, specifically the flow sheet and the plant design will be associated with how we’re going to recover the metallurgy. Ultimately we produce a concentrate and we need to know what that concentrate contains so we can come up with appropriate furnace design in the case of our construction of an operation where we generate a low grade map for direct saleable product into the international markets. We are 3 months ahead of schedule on this and it’s primarily because we’ve been able to trigger a logistical support where we’ve been able to extract the sample as we’ve been drilling it through our various helicopters flights so what we have right now is the samples are sitting here in Khabarovsk and we’re taking advantage of getting the inventory stockpiled and we’ll take a complete and considered review as to what our next metallurgical steps are. We are looking at doing a bit of independent test work to confirm everything that has been done previously by USGS Minerals but this a big stepping stone for us and it’s going to allow us to define the amount of metal that we can actually deliver into a product. So we’re really quite pleased that we can possible get this programme moving faster, possibly as much as 3 months earlier on the metallurgical test work although that even though we’re doing the test work on a quicker than planned schedule we still have our environmental and mine design work which will not be more quickly advanced because of this early trigger on the acquisition sample.
Q3: Now I think you’ve given me some kind of indication to size but just how big is the MKF programme, could you put this into some kind of perspective for us?
A3: Well as I mentioned we had planned on drilling 15,000 metres and we’ll probably drill more because we’re already fast approaching that limit but as we’ve been drilling in this point in time we’ve drilled 12,000 metres and to put it into perspective it would be the same as going for a walk from Buckingham Palace to Trafalgar Square, you’ve had to make that round trip 5 times to walk the length of the total core that we’ve done. The deposit itself that we have defined, the indicated resources, now exist along a 2,100 metre continuous length of the MKF deposit, that’s the same as taking a walk from Buckingham Palace all the way to the Royal Courts and walking on minerally the entire length of the distance so that gives you more a human presentation instead of just pure numbers. We still have 5 deposits and that walk’s a little bit longer and that would be from Buckingham Palace to London City airport so these are the kind of sizes that we’re talking about and right now if we were the only nickel mine in the world and we could extract all our nickel that would represent about 6 months of the world’s consumption. The project is beginning to fall into line and it’s substantial and can certainly benefit the company as we move forward through the DFS and the updates that we look forward to coming on from this drill programme.
