Great Western Minerals Group (GWMG) has provided a progress report on the drill program at its Steenkampskraal rare earth mine site in South Africa. Some 26 coreholes totaling 2,307 m have been completed, including 19 holes dedicated to metallurgical mini-bulk sampling and seven for geological resource delineation. The former-producing Steenkampskraal mine is located approximately 70 km north of the town of Vanrhynsdorp in the Western Cape, approximately 350 km north of Cape Town. The mine is held by Steenkampskraal Monazite Mine (SMM), a 74%-owned subsidiary of Rare Earth Extraction Co (Rareco) which is a 100%-owned subsidiary of GWMG.
Jim Engdahl, President and CEO of GWMG stated: “Our drilling and sampling program will continue to mid-December, 2011. This moves us toward completion of two goals at Steenkampskraal – first, to provide information in support of a fully compliant National Instrument 43-101 resource estimate report and second, to expand the resources at Steenkampskraal through testing the down-dip extension of the main structure as well as investigation of the encasing host rock mineralisation.” For metallurgical testing, clusters of drillholes with a variety of bearings and inclinations were situated around a central resource definition corehole on selected locations to collect representative samples of monazite mineralisation. Intersections of mineralisation in metallurgical holes ranged from a few centimetres to 3.55 m along core length. These holes will be logged in detail, measured for bulk density, and sampled for assay. In addition, a representative selection of the resource definition core has been identified and sampled for ongoing mineralogical and textural studies. Resource definition holes encountered a comparable range of true vein thicknesses,
The second major objective of the drill program is the step-out designed to test the on-strike and down-dip extension of rare earth mineralisation of the Steenkampskraal deposit. So far approximately 185 kg out of a proposed 600 kg of underground monazite sample has been collected by underground channel sampling. Upon completion, this material will be submitted for characterisation studies. Mintek has been selected to conduct the metallurgical characterisation necessary for development of design criteria for ore beneficiation and rare earth extraction at Steenkampskraal. Approximately 630 kg of mini-bulk metallurgical sample from the surface tailings dam and 730 kg from the rock dump were submitted to Mintek in early November 2011.
An additional 276 samples were collected by shallow tube sampling on a 10 m grid pattern covering the historic tailings dam onsite. Assay samples from the resource definition coreholes are continuing to be collected through to mid-December. All assay results will be reported as they are received from the laboratory with the priority use of the data being for incorporation into the metallurgical characterisation of the potential ore, as well as resource modelling report, which is contracted to SRK Consulting South Africa.