28 January 2022
Vital Metals Limited (ASX: VML) (“Vital”, “Vital Metals” or “the Company”) is pleased to provide a summary of the 2021 maiden mining campaign at its Nechalacho rare earths project in Northwest Territories (NWT), Canada.
Local contract mining company Det’on Cho Nahanni Construction mined nearly 58,000 tonnes of ore from the North T pit at Nechalacho during a five-month mining campaign which aimed to demonstrate Nechalacho’s viability as a rare earths project.
Vital mined about two thirds (68%) of overall material planned to be mined during the campaign, with 408,000 tonnes of the planned 599,000 tonnes mined.
While mining volumes were lower than originally planned, Vital’s ore sorter at Nechalacho exceeded expectations, enabling the Company to successfully sort lower-grade material previously below the resource cut-off not included in the mine plan.
Vital also intersected a high-grade zone, the ‘dragon’s tail’, at North T during mining which has prompted the Company to review its mine plan.
Vital Metals Managing Director Geoff Atkins said: “We are very pleased to report that the 2021 mining campaign was successfully completed with over two years production worth of ore mined whilst incurring no lost time nor environmental incidents. To achieve this during the middle of a pandemic with its associated restrictions on travel and other operational matters is a testament to the entire Vital team and one which everyone should be extremely proud of.”
“The completion of this first mining and ore sorting campaign represents an important milestone in Vital’s vision of guaranteeing feedstock to the rare earths’ supply chain with the North T deposit forming the basis upon which Vital product will be qualified by end users enabling future expansion of operations.”
“The 58,000t of ore mined contains approximately 11,500t of ore previously identified within our pit design with the remaining 47,500t previously classified as waste. This includes ore which was in the top 5m from surface and hence excluded from the original resource and hence mine inventory, the high-grade zone in the ‘dragon’s tail’ and material which was below the resource cut-off which, during commissioning of the ore sorter, we found could be successfully sorted and is now regarded as ore which is suitable for processing. This presents a significant opportunity for increasing the quantity of rare earths to be processed from the North T deposit.”
“Because we have identified all this additional material which we are now able to process, we made the decision to amend our mining campaign, so that we can redesign the pit to ensure we maximise this additional quantity of rare earths which we will mine at North T in subsequent campaigns.”
The redesign of the pit will be completed during the Northern summer with a follow up mining campaign to be completed during the 2023 or 2024 summer period.
Due to the unique nature of mineralisation at North T, where ore is red and waste is white, Vital classified ore and waste on sight, not assays or grade.
Mining operations at Nechalacho ceased in October and equipment demobilised from site.
Vital produced more than 1,000 bags of beneficiated product at site, each totalling approximately 1,000kg of material. The first of these bags have arrived in Saskatoon to be processed at Vital’s rare earths extraction plant, which is under construction. The transportation of this product has provided the first opportunity to test the logistics of transporting beneficiated product from site to the Saskatoon facility.
In addition, it has stockpiled nearly 11,000m3 of material on site at Nechalacho, comprising high- grade (1,630m3) and low-grade (4,240m3) crushed material and fines (4,770m3), which it will process on site.