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January 2017
MODERN MINING
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Top projects
TIN
Alphamin teammembers at
the Logu Bridge.
Still and Anton Esterhuizen) and is backed by
Denham Capital which – through its subsidiary
Tremont Master Holdings – has a 44 % stake.
Alphamin completed its acquisition of the
Bisie property in 2013 and has since under-
taken an enormous volume of work. Drilling
alone – mainly at the Mpama North site – totals
nearly 40 km and has enabled Alphamin to
publish some truly impressive resource figures.
The latest resource update for Mpama North,
filed in June 2016, includes a measured min-
eral resource of 0,46 Mt at 4,31 % tin for 19 600
tonnes of contained tin, an indicated mineral
resource of 4,14 Mt at 4,55 % tin for 188 400
tonnes of contained tin and an inferred min-
eral resource of 0,54 Mt at 4,25 % tin for 22 800
tonnes of contained tin; all using a cut-off of
0,5 % tin. This represents a 34 % increase
in the measured and indicated category tin
resources announced in October 2015.
“Our original target was to get 100 000
tonnes of tin and we have now more than dou-
bled this, based purely on Mpama North,” says
Kamstra. “The Mpama South orebody further
down the ridge at Bisie could well host similar
resources but frankly we have no need to do
more drilling at the moment, as Mpama North
will support many years of mining. The figures
for Mpama North are so good that sometimes
when you look at them you wonder whether a
decimal point has been put in the wrong place.
The grade we were expecting was around 2,5 %
but we’ve got well over 4 %. At present met-
als prices, this makes Mpama North roughly
equivalent to a 16,4 % copper deposit or a gold
deposit of 18,5 g/t Au.
“On a world scale, Mpama North is
extremely impressive,” he continues. “The
only orebody bigger is Syrymbet in northern
Kazakhstan which has a much lower grade. It
also has a difficult metallurgy whereas ours is
excellent. As Anton Esterhuizen has said, Bisie
is part of an emerging tin province that is one
of the most significant globally.”
A key milestone for Bisie was the pub-
lication of a Definitive Feasibility Study
(DFS) in February 2016. It was compiled by
MDM Engineering in collaboration with Bara
Consulting, who provided the mineral reserves
estimate. Other consultants involved with
the DFS were Epoch and The MSA Group.
Logistics and infrastructural studies to sup-
port the DFS were performed by Paradigm
Project Management while the metallurgical
testwork was carried out by Maelgwyn Mineral
Services. The DFS has since (in June 2016)
been updated, mainly to reflect the increase in
Bisie’s resources since completion of the DFS.
The Updated Feasibility Study (UFS) envis-
ages an estimated initial capital expenditure of
US$124,4 million to support the construction of
an access road, an underground mine, a process
“Our original
target was to get
100 000 tonnes of
tin and we have
nowmore than
doubled this,
based purely on
Mpama North.”