Janganda Mines reveals Pedra Blanca PGM project

Jangada Mines, a natural resources company developing South America’s largest and most advanced platinum group metals project, has announced that it has completed a Scoping Study for its Pedra Branca PGM project in north-eastern Brazil.

Jangada, through the study, has confirmed that Pedra Branca has the potential to become a robust shallow open pit operation, with a low capital expenditure requirement, yielding attractive financial returns and a very short payback period.

Further details of the study conclude that the project has the potential to produce an Internal Rate of Return (IRR) of 80% and a payback period of 1.3 years, with a low capital expenditure requirement of US$38.4m for the construction of the mining operation, processing plant and the associated infrastructure

At a production rate of 1.1Mt per year, the operation will have a potential life-of-mine of 13 years at a very low 1.07 strip ratio producing 34,000 ounces of PGM+Au per annum

Pedra Branca is already the largest and most advanced PGM project in South America and currently has a JORC compliant resource of approximately 1 million ounces of PGM+Au

 Brian McMaster, Executive Chairman of Jangada said, “The results of the Scoping Study are excellent and clearly demonstrate the outstanding potential of this polymetallic project as a low cost, shallow pit PGM operation with excellent financial returns.  The addition of the by-product credits for critical technology metals including cobalt, nickel and copper has a significant positive impact on the economics and underpins our belief that Pedra Branca has the potential to be a ‘free platinum’ operation, where by-product credits cover the costs of PGM production.  We are also seeing significant value addition through the envisaged chrome concentrate production from the same ore zone.
 

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 “With these excellent results, we look forward to continuing to develop Pedra Branca as the pre-eminent PGM asset in South America, immediately advancing the project through the pre-feasibility study.  We are also continuing to investigate further optimisation potential and value addition through our on-going metallurgical test work.  Our management team on the ground is working hard to prepare the Project for final permitting as we continue toward our goal of trial production in early 2018.”

The Pedra Branca Project is the largest and most advanced PGM project in South America and currently has a JORC (2012) compliant resource of approximately 1 million ounces of PGM+Au at a grade of 1.3 g/t, 109 Mlbs of Ni, 23 Mlbs of Cu, 6.4 Mlbs of Co and 670kt of Cr2O3.  The Project is located approximately 280 km from the port city of Fortaleza in the northeast of Brazil and holds three mining licenses and 43 exploration licenses over an area of approximately 50,000 ha.

 Previous operators have spent more than US$35 million on exploration and development activities, which include 30,000 meters of diamond core drilling, geophysical surveys and metallurgical tests.