Bushveld Minerals (LON:BMN) has found more evidence of vanadium from drilling into the AB Zone at its project in Limpopo, South Africa.
Assays from the drilling had delineated an inaugural strike of about 1.7 km in length, Bushveld said.
The AB Zone is one of three potential commercial vanadium deposits identified so far at Bushveld. MML and MML Hanging Wall are the other two. Only MML was included in a scoping study for the project.
AB Zone is 10m wide zone of disseminated magnetite identified in the footwall to MML. The work programme was to assess the potential extent of the strike. Drilling will now focus on establishing a maiden mineral resource estimate for AB Zone, said Bushveld.
This will run concurrently with a drilling programme on MML aimed at collecting material for further metallurgical test-work and infill drilling to upgrade portions of the MML ore body to the Measured category.
A resource update is also currently underway for the Hanging Wall area.
Fortune Mojapelo, Bushveld Minerals’s chief executive, said: "These intersections on the AB Zone confirm that a suitable strike extent for this ore body exists at shallow levels.
We will shortly begin infill drilling to quantify the grade and tonnage of this mineralisation into a JORC Mineral Resource Estimate, which we expect to complete in 1H 2015.
“While the additional AB Zone mineralisation announced today is still at an early stage, its results offer strong encouragement for further improving the economics of the Bushveld Vanadium Project's high-grade, shallow and open castable resources.
“This is particularly welcome given that our scoping study was premised solely of the MML resource, which has to date been defined to the Indicated Resource Category and has as independently assessed post tax NPV10 of US$264m."
Best grades for the holes for teh Ab Zone drill holes were 0.52% vanadium (V2O5) over 16m and 0.67% over 23m.
The company said while the in-situ grades were lower than its fist drill hole on the prospect, they were considerably higher than global average grades and the intersection widths were significantly larger.