South Africa Focused Bushveld Minerals Will Deliver a Resource Upgrade

Proactive Investors reported that South Africa focused Bushveld Minerals will deliver a resource upgrade on its flagship iron ore project by the end of the year following an extensive drilling program.

Bushveld said that the drilling had extended the strike of the targeted mineralization deposit by about 25% and increased confidence in the resource.

The company said that its application to the Department of Mineral Resources to extend the footprint of its license area was also in its final stages. This will more than double the current strike of the mineralization and will be followed immediately by aggressive drilling to increase the size of the resource beyond the current 1 billion tonne target.

Bushveld added that preliminary results from the extractive metallurgical test work confirmed that a high grade concentrate can be achieved from both the Disseminated and Massive Magnetite Zones in the mineralization.

Most promising are the high concentrate grades and good recoveries achieved on the 6 mm and 12 mm course grind fractions from the Massive Magnetite Ore.

Additional test work will be completed this year and form an important component of a scoping study to be completed by the Q1 of 2013. This will incorporate infrastructure, market studies, mining scoping studies, as well as environmental and social impact studies.

At the Mokopane tin project, a resource announcement is scheduled for the Q1 of 2013.

The group had cash of EUR 3.3 million at end August, with sufficient capital to complete the scoping study.

Mr Fortune Mojapelo CEO of Bushveld said that it retained a positive outlook of the iron ore, titanium and vanadium as well as tin industries.

Mr Mojapelo said that demand for iron ore and tin continues to be robust despite the decrease in the gross domestic product growth rates in China and the as yet unresolved economic crisis in Europe notwithstanding.

He said that “While the generally higher mining labor costs from the recent developments can be expected to increase the mining cash costs for South African operations, Bushveld Minerals is well positioned to benefit from its iron ore project's robust and consistent mineralization amenable to low cost, open cast and mechanized mining approaches that are less vulnerable to labor related stoppages.”