Australian resource company Graphex Mining (ASX:GPX) recently announced that the high grade mineral resource at its Chilalo graphite project in southeast Tanzania has increased by 80% to 16.9Mt.
Chilalo’s 16.9Mt high grade mineral resource is comprised of 5.2Mt indicated resource and 11.7Mt inferred resource.
The increase in the mineral resource follows the discovery of two new zones of graphite mineralization located adjacent to the north and southwest of the existing Chilalo mineral resource.
One of these is a new and separate zone of graphite mineralization located approximately 300 meters north and running parallel to the existing mineral resource.
The other is located to the southwest of the existing mineral resource, confirming the continuation of mineralization along strike.
Phil Hoskins, Managing Director of Graphex, commented: “We are pleased to have delivered such a significant increase in the high-grade Chilalo mineral resource and in doing so, further confirmed the outstanding prospectivity of our Chilalo tenements. The increase in the mineral resource is expected to extend the mine life and improve the project economics. This is an outstanding result, which combined with our ‘markets first’ approach to Chilalo’s development, is expected to yield an excellent outcome for shareholders. Our Chinese project partners place significant value in the exploration potential at Chilalo and this news will be welcomed by them as we seek to finalize negotiations for offtake and financing.”
Chilalo Graphite Project
The Chilalo graphite project is located in south east Tanzania, within the Mozambique belt, which is well known for hosting some of the world’s highest grade and coarse flake graphite deposits.
Average annual production is expected to be 69,000t of graphite concentrate over 10 years.
Graphex indicates that the Shimba deposit has a total resource (indicated and inferred) of 25.1m t; however, after a recent drilling program, Graphex has identified a new mineralized zone 200–300 meters north of Shimba.
Accordingly, this will underpin an increase in the Shimba mineral resource estimate, which is expected to be announced in the near future, Graphex notes.
Hoskins commented: “We have still only scratched the surface on our tenements and I expect additional exploration to be carried out following the finalization of project offtake negotiations. Given the number of untested targets, Chilalo has the potential to host one of the world’s largest graphite resources.”
Tanzania Graphite
Tanzania’s largest graphite deposits are located in the central and east southern regions of the country.
At the end of 2015, The Tanzanian Ministry of Energy and Minerals (MEM) announced that Tanzania will soon become one of the largest producers of graphite in the world, due to recent and abundant discoveries of graphite fields across the country.
Graphite discoveries in Tanzania come mainly from Australia based graphite developers, Magnis Resources (ASX:MNS), Volt Resources (ASX:VRC) and Kibaran Resources (ASX:KNL).
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