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PLANNED DEVELOPMENT

The Garnet Hills Project offers the unique opportunity to develop an industrial garnet deposit that can supply garnet to a variety of industries including abrasive blasting, filtration, jet cutting, abrasive paper coating, oil field drill hole proppant and possibly plasma screen production. By contributing to the development of Garnet Hills garnet project the Incoming Party will have  the opportunity of acquiring a major interest in a producing mine that is expected to be highly profitable over the life of mine envisaged to be at least 20 years.

 

Environmental studies (wet and dry season) have been completed and a heritage survey has shown that there are no potential sacred sites/heritage sites within the tenement. Mine Proposal and Mine Closure reports are currently being undertaken and will be submitted to the DMIRS shortly.  It is envisaged that there will be no impediments to commencement of mining within 6 months of the acceptance of the reports.  The granted Mining Lease that has now been extended for another 21 years (with further extensions expected) represents a significant advantage in the establishment of a mine within acceptable time limits (ie < 6 months). 

GARNET HILLS PROJECT AND 

DISCOUNTED CASH FLOW PROFORMA

The success of the Garnet Hills industrial garnet project will be predicated on;

  • Initial direct shipping garnet concentrate after crushing and ore-sorting using state of the art Steinert RGB ore-sorting technology. 

  • Modest incremental production increases based on market demand.

  • A similar concept applied to capital requirements commencing with an initial requirement of A$500K in the first year for trial mining, processing and marketing.

  • Capital requirements building to an estimated aggregate of A$3.5M to facilitate onsite plant construction and camp facilities, and largely funded by garnet sales.

  • Inherent advantages of the project including the presence of a haul road linking the Garnet Hills site to the all weather, bitumen, Great Northern Highway and the port of Wyndham, 280 km to the north.

  • A pre-native title Mining Lease – M80/416 and adjacent Exploration Licence – E80/4851 containing additional hard rock garnet mineralization. 

  • A very competitive A$ to US$ exchange rate will make the project highly profitable with expected return of capital within the first full year of production. 

  • A sales team available in the western US and, in particular, the Tucson Arizona area. Tucson offers under utilized beneficiation facilities and a freight rail distribution system to the rest of the US.  

  • Current wholesale garnet prices of  A$650 (and up to A$765) per tonne for jet-cutting, abrasive blasting and filtration garnet products in the US where demand is increasing at a rate of 5% to 10% per annum. 

  • Competitive garnet production from India (Bay of Bengal) is being greatly curtailed by the Indian Government because of environmental concerns.  

 

The project is available for immediate development with Mining Lease  - M80/416 remaining current until 2038 (and longer with standard extensions). Commercial mining can commence after Mine Proposal and Mine Closure plans submitted to the Western Australian Mines Department (DMIRS) have been accepted.  As a current Mining Lease and the submission of a simple mining and processing plan these requests are expected to represent only a formality.

 

Based on a planned increase in garnet concentrate  production  from 25Ktpa to 50Ktpa,  preliminary studies show that the project will pay back  capital in the first  12 months and will provide a cumulative net cash flow of A$160M over 9 years with an  NPV of A$101M (before tax and using a 7.5% discount rate).   

 

Depending on market demand,  the project could be ramped up to 100,000 tpa garnet production over a 20 year period for greatly enhanced returns. 

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