Sable granted licence for Nimba Iron Ore Project

PUBLISHED: 30 Sep 2013 @ 21:47 | Comments (0) |

Sable Mining Africa (LSE:SBLM), an AIM listed exploration company, has announced the granting of a mining licence for the Nimba Iron Ore Project in south-west Guinea, the second largest undeveloped on- or near-rail Direct Shipping Ore project to be held outside the major mining companies in West Africa.

The licence, or “Permit D’Exploitation Miniere”, number D2013/150/ PRG/SGG, was issued to the Company’s 80% owned subsidiary West African Exploration SA and signed by His Excellency Professeur Alpha Conde the President of the Republic of Guinea. The Licence covers the initial area of focus at Nimba, being a 23 sq km area covering portions of Plateaux 2 and 3 of the total 123.5 sq km Nimba Project (‘the Mining Licence Area’) which has a current JORC Resource of 135.5 million tonnes.

A recent drilling programme over the Mining Licence Area, focussing on a 200m by 3.9km extension area covering parts of Plateau 2 and Plateau 3, highlighted significant high grade DSO mineralisation, including an intersection measuring 36.0m at 62.0% iron (‘Fe’) (which includes 2.8m of cavities). The Board is confident that with the inclusion of the results from this drilling programme, the JORC compliant resource will be increased towards the exploration target of 200Mt that is being targeted at Nimba during Q4 2013.

In addition to high grade DSO tonnages at or very close to surface, metallurgical results from Nimba have indicated that production should benefit from a simple “crush and screen” process. The high lump fraction should enable production to commence with a dry plant, with no beneficiation required, which should considerably reduce the upfront capex requirements faced by many iron ore developers.

Sable Mining CEO Andrew Groves said, “The granting of the Licence is a landmark achievement for Sable Mining which will pave the way for us to begin development of this world-class high tonnage, high DSO grade and low capex iron ore asset.

“I would like to thank the Government of the Republic of Guinea for their continued support for the development of Nimba, which we believe to be a highly valuable deposit with strategic importance. We will continue to work closely with the relevant authorities to ensure the timely issuance of our export decree whilst remaining focussed on the resource upgrade, rail allocation and Pre-Feasibility Study publication, which are all expected by the end of 2013.”

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