Aquarius and Sylvania team up on Everest North

Production and Markets

Publishing Date: 03 Jun 2011 11:18am GMT
Author: Mining Journal

A dispute over the Everest North platinum project between Sylvania Platinum Ltd and Aquarius Platinum Ltd has been resolved with a joint venture (JV) in the offing and ore set to be treated at Aquarius’ Everest South mine.

In its most recent annual report, released last October, Sylvania said “an out-of-court commercial agreement” was on the cards after Aquarius disputed Sylvania’s rights to apply for a mining right over the project in its name and the simultaneous transfer to Sylvania.

A feasibility committee will have an exclusive six months to review and update the existing feasibility study over the project. A mining right will also be compiled over this period.

A joint venture would then be formed with Aquarius managing the project.

Aquarius will make 27,000t/mth (327,000t/y) of capacity available at its Everest South Metallurgical Plant.

Sylvania’s chief executive, Terry McConnachie said: “While we are effectively giving away half of our ore resource the advantage to Sylvania is a vastly reduced capex bill and thus increased IRR and NPV.”

The deposit contains about 5.1Mt of UG2 resources grading approximately 4.7g/t platinum group metals for 770,000oz.