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ReGIonAL RoUnDUP

Rafaella ready for resource

nother round of positive drilling re- in the mid-1980s, previous owners in- confident that is going to be repeated,”
Asults should be enough to embolden stalled new processing facilities in 2012. Turner said. “History also says recov-
Rafaella Resources Ltd to move straight The project boasts existing processing eries are around 70% from the under-
into construction on its Santa Comba facilities including screens, conveyors ground.”
tungsten project in northern Spain later and a 100 tph jaw crusher and is well The company’s offtake agreement with
this year. supported by sealed roads, grid power, HC Starck also affords Rafaella flexibility
In late January, Rafaella produced a tailings facilities and onsite office and in grades.
string of impressive drilling results from workshop buildings. “The HC Starck arrangement allows us
the Quarry prospect at Santa Comba, “This is not an exploration project,” to deliver a lower tungsten concentrate
including hits of 6.7m @ 1.19% tungsten Turner explained. “It is already permitted without attracting penalties,” Turner said.
and 295 ppm tin from 31.4m and 1.5m and a lot of the back-end work is done “That, along with relatively inexpensive
@ 3.62% and 67 ppm from 96.7m. The – road, power, tailings and other infra- transport costs, will give us a lot of flex-
results will form the base of an updated structure – and there is an aggregate ibility in the kind of concentrates we can
resource estimate for Santa Comba quarry there already. The permits are out deliver.”
which the company hopes will deliver an to 2068, and a substantial amount of the Once resource and metallurgical drill-
economically viable indicated resource. process plant is in place. ing is complete, Rafaella can begin to
“We are very happy with the results,” “Our focus is on the front end, defin- step up feasibility work.
Rafaella managing director Steven Turn- ing the open pittable, near-surface min- “Our feasibility study manager John
er said. “We set out back in August with eralisation. We will complete that drilling Webster came back from Spain recent-
a simple strategy of converting the 5mt of and do some metallurgical testing. We ly,” Turner said. “He had met with the
inferred resources into indicated. The re- are reasonably advanced with the metal- independent geologists and is getting a
sults coming out are in line with that and lurgy. Initial results are looking good. We feel for how the resource will shape up.
are sometimes exceeding expectations.” also sent samples to Tomra for ore sort- We are already planning the geotechni-
Given Quarry encompasses two-thirds ing test work; those tests showed there cal holes.”
of the Santa Comba resource, the drill- was very clear definition of the wolfram- The resource update is set for release
ing results have provided Turner with ite.” in April, paving the way for completion
confidence the company can confirm the The met work has also supported his- of the feasibility study in the September
historical numbers and kick-start devel- torical accounts of good recoveries and a quarter, according to Turner.
opment in coming months. clean product from Santa Comba. European projects often reach the fea-
Advantages in this regard are numer- “It produced a very clean concentrate sibility stage before floundering under-
ous. Although Santa Comba was closed when it was mined in the 80s and we are neath the continent’s heavy regulatory

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