Ormonde’s 100% owned Barruecopardo Tungsten Project in western Spain is one of the premier undeveloped tungsten projects in the world outside of China:

• Large & High Grade - 27.39 Mt grading 0.26% WO₃(tungsten trioxide). 17.8 Mt Measured & Indicated and 9.59 Mt Inferred Mineral Resource categories (JORC-compliant)

• Deposit open along strike and at depth – likely long life mine

• Initial production rate by open pit of 1.1m tonnes per year, to produce an averaged 230,000 mtu WO3 per year for nine years

• Low capital cost of €40M and cash operating costs of €104/mtu 

• Forecasted annual net cash flows of €20M at APT price of US$290/mtu and €29M at APT price of US$350/mtu

• 80% recovery to a 65% WO₃(industry standard) scheelite concentrate using simple gravity processing.  Premium grade 77.8% achievable while maintaining overall recovery

• Well serviced and politically stable location

• Production scheduled for mid-2013

Find out more About Tungsten.

Location & Mineralisation

Barruecopardo is located in the Salamanca Province of the Castilla y Leon Region in North West Spain. The Project is a brownfield site, the deposit having previously being worked to shallow depths by a series of small open pit workings (30m depth) and one larger open pit (80m depth), from the early 1900s until 1982.

Barruecopardo is a steeply dipping, multiple zone mineralised system with a strike length of over 1.6km. The deposit is open at depth, with drilling to date having tested only the top 150-250m. Previous operations at Barrecopardo produced a clean, high grade, tungsten concentrate which was sold to tungsten metal processors.  Tungsten minerilisation occurs in quartz veins dominantly as coarse grained scheelite, with minor to trace wolframite which form part of a major granite-hosted sheeted vein system..

Mineral Resources

The current JORC mineral resource estimate (prepared by CSA Global, Oct'11) presently stands at 27.39 Mt grading 0.26% WO₃ equating to 7.1 million metric tonne units (mtus) or 71,000 tonnes of contained WO₃. Of this total, 17.8 million tonnes grading 0.29% WO₃ (equating to 5.06 million mtus or 50,600 tonnes of contained WO₃) is in the Measured & Indicated Resource categories, with an additional Inferred Resource of 9.59 million tonnes grading 0.23% WO₃(equating to a further 2.2 million mtus or 2,000 tonnes of contained WO₃).

The resource is presently drilled to an average depth of 200m and is completely open at depth along its presently defined 1.6km strike length, drilling to date yielding more than 10Mt per 100m of vertical depth. As such it is expected that the resource will expand considerably when deeper drilling is eventually initiated; a long life mining operation is anticipated.

 

Mining

Largely mechanised; initial production by open pit (9 year open pit life; Interim Feasibility Study Oct'11) & subsequently by underground mining. Mining is facilitated by the::

• steeply dipping nature of the deposit
• regular geometry
• competent ground conditions.

Initial open pit production rate of 1,100,000 tpa, to produce 230,000 mtu WO3 per year over a nine year period (Interim Feasibility Study).

Mineral Processing

Mineralisation is very coarse and is amenable to low cost gravity concentration.
Testwork shows 80% recovery to a 65% WO3 scheelite concentrate.  A premium grade concentrate of 77.8% is achievable while maintaining overall metal recovery. Processing will be via:

• three stage crushing to 3-5mm
• gravity concentration of heavy tungsten minerals by jigs and spirals
• clean-up of all gravity concentrates.

No grinding circut and no tailings dam will be required and this will result in low capital and low operating costs. 

Costs

Capital Cost: €40M for a 1.1Mtpy operation
Cash Operating Cost (Open Pit): €104/mtu

Development Plans 2011/2013

• Permitting of brownfields site
• Completion of engineering design and feasibility study
• Finalise capital funding/off-take agreements
• Construction & production by mid-2013

 

Other Benefits

• Excellent road infrastructure directly to site
• Availability of local services and power supply
• Strong local stakeholder support
• Brownfields site
  

Location: Salamanca Province, Castilla y Leon Region, Western Spain, approximately 70km west of the city of Salamanca and 350 km west-north west of Madrid.  The central service town in the area is Vitigudino.

Ownership: Ormonde has a 100% interest in six investigation permits in Salamanca Province, totalling some 272 square kilometres, with applications for a further three permits totaling 113 square kilometres. These permits are held by Saloro S.L.U, a wholly-owned Ormonde subsidiary. The permits are issued for an initial period of 3 years, renewable for further periods of 3 years upon submission of work programmes to the regional authority, the Junta de Castilla y Leon.

Current Status: Definitive Feasibility Study underway and initial permitting documentation submitted in January 2011.

Ormonde is evaluating a previously mined tungsten deposit in the Salamanca area of western Spain (Fig-1A and B).  The mineralisation is contained within the Barruecopardo (Bar..wec..o..par..do) Vein System (Fig-2). Drilling to-date has defined a 1,600m long by 300m wide mineralised system, containing  5, higher grade, steeply dipping, zones of sheeted veins within granite rocks (Fig-3).

A second vein system, termed Valdegallegos, is located one km to the west of Barruecopardo.  Small mine production workings in this area indicate the potential of this system. To date little exploration has been carried out on the Valdegallegos System, although of the two holes drilled into this system by Ormonde one returned high grade tungsten mineralisation.

The 5 main zones within Barruecopardo System, as depicted in the plan, are from east to west:

• Filon Abilio
• Filon Principal
• Filon Central
• Filon Maestro
• Filon Oeste

• Fig-1A Castilla y Leon Region
• Fig-1B Salamanca Province
• Fig-2A Plan showing Tungsten Mineralised Zones
• Fig-2B Overview plan of the main tungsten mineralised zones at Barruecopardo
• Fig-3A Cross Sections through Barruecopardo
• Fig-3B Cross Sections through Barruecopardo
• Fig-3C Cross Sections through Barruecopardo

The Salamanca Province is an area of substantial historic tungsten production and Barruecopardo was, until the early 1980s, the largest tungsten mine in Spain, producing a high quality tungsten concentrate from open-pit mining.  The original mining at Barruecopardo was via a series of small, up to 200m long, by typically 5m to 30m wide, very steep sided, largely non-mechanised, open pit workings. These mine workings were largely located on the northern end of the Filon Maestro Zone and the main southern portion of the Filon Principal Zone, but with some workings on Filon Abilio, Filon Central, Filon Oeste and on the Valdegallegos veins. These surface operations were advanced downwards to depths of up to 30m, as depicted in the photo below (Fig-4).

More recent mining, from the 1960s up until 1982, concentrated on developing the small open pit workings on the Filon Principal Zone into a larger, 800m long by 100m wide, mechanised open pit operation (the Main Pit), which was accessed via a ramp and mined down to a maximum depth of 80m (Fig-5). The pit walls were semi-vertical and intermediate safety berms were not in general cut into these walls.  All material mined in the Main Pit was crushed in-pit (Fig-6), transported to surface by a conveyor located in an underground gallery and all material (both ore and waste) was processed through the gravity plant.  Figure-7 shows an oblique aerial view of the Main Pit, processing plant, mine offices and tailings dumps. The vertical pit walls, lack of safety berms, the unselective mining method and the material handling arrangements, all eventually created mining and economic issues which eventually forced a cessation of mining activities in 1982.  Figure-8 shows the presently flooded Main Pit.

• Fig-4 Historic working (1943)
• Fig-5 Main Open Pit, circa 1980
• Fig-6 Crusher Station dump point in Main Pit
• Fig-7 Oblique Aerial Photo circa 1980
• Fig-8 Main Open Pit 2008, looking south
• Fig-9 Aerial Photograph Plan View showing old mine workings and Ormonde drillholes

Drilling: Ormonde is the first company to carry out systematic drilling at Barruecopardo. Drilling to-date of 56 diamond drillholes has established the presence of 5 steeply-dipping zones within a mineralised system at least 1,600 metres  long, which is open to the north and south. All zones are also open at depth, with the current drilling having established continuity of the mineralisation to circa 250 metres depth.  Figure-9 shows the drillhole layout superimposed on an aerial photograph showing the old open pits.

Geology: The work carried out by Ormonde has established that the tungsten mineralisation occurs dominantly in narrow quartz veins (Fig-10) as coarse grained scheelite, with minor to trace wolframite, which form part of a major granite-hosted sheeted vein system. The veins, usually less than 40mm in thickness, but with considerable strike and dip continuity, contain minor quantities of sulphides, generally have a NNE strike and dip steeply to the east. The very coarse nature of the mineralisation (Fig-11, 12) indicates a strong nugget effect and necessitates application of an upper cut-off for resource estimation.

• Fig-10 Vein Swarm at Filon Maestro on west wall
• Fig-11 Dark material is wolframite tungsten mineralisation in drill core
• Fig-12 Barruecopardo Scheelite tungsten mineralisation under normal light and fluorescent light
• Fig-13 Overview plan of the main tungsten mineralised zones at Barruecopardo
• Fig-14 Detailed level plan of the FP Zone showing drillhole intersection data
• Fig-15 Flooded old mine workings at Valdegallegos

The Barruecopardo deposit is contained within a major granite-hosted, sheeted vein system with a known length in excess of 1.6 kilometres, striking NNE and dipping steeply to the east.  Tungsten mineralisation (Fig-10,11,12) occurs dominantly in narrow quartz veins, usually less than 10 centimetres in thickness, as coarse grained scheelite,with minor to trace wolframite and minor quantities of sulphides.  The zones of more intense veining can be up to 40 metres wide.

Mineral Resources:

In December 2011, CSA Global (Australia) prepared a JORC-compliant Mineral Resource Estimate based upon all holes drilled in the deposit and the full XRF tungsten assay database.  CSA has classified the Mineral Resources in the Measured, Indicated and Inferred categories as follows:

Category	Tonnes (millions)	Grade (WO3%)	Contained WO3 (mtu*)
Measured	5.47	0.34	1.86 million
Indicated	12.33	0.26	3.20 million
Inferred	9.59	0.23	2.20 million
Total	27.39	0.26	7.12. million

* mtu = metric tonne unit, the standard unit for measurement  and trading of tungsten, which is equivalent to 10 kg of WO3.  1.8 million mtu is equivalent to 18,000 tonnes.

Grade compositing, used to define the mineralised volume, has been carried out using a minimum horizontal width of 4 metres at a minimum grade of >=0.06% WO3, allowing for internal dilution. This process defined areas of mineralisation that constitute a potentially mineable width at an economic grade. These resources are effectively diluted to mineable grade by this estimation procedure.

The Mineral Resource has been modelled to depths of 230 metres below the ground surface.  Drilling has shown that all resource zones over the 1.6 kilometre strike length of the deposit continue at depth (Fig 13,14), with the current resource equating to a tonnage distribution of some 10 million tonnes for every 100 metres of depth of the deposit.  The Company believes that  the open nature of the presently defined deposit and this vertical tonnage distribution  indicate considerable scope for very significant increases to this resource in the future.

Metallurgy and Mineral Processing:

Testwork has indicated that the coarse-grained tungsten minerals (Fig-11, 12) may be concentrated effectively, following crushing to 5mm, to yield high recoveries to a gravity pre-concentrate.  Cleaning and upgrading of this pre-concentrate shows that 78% of the contained tungsten can be recovered to a final cleaned scheelite concentrate at the industry standard grade of 65% WO₃. The work to date has indicated that the process plant would consist of:

• 3-stage crushing to -5mm
• Gravity concentration of minus -5mm ore in Jigs operating in rougher-scavenger-cleaner circuit
• Gravity concentration of the minus 1mm ore in spirals configured in a rougher-scavenger-cleaner circuit
• Grind of pre-concentrate to 300-800 micron
• Clean-up of the pre-concentrates on tables
• Final clean-up circuit using combination of flotation and/or electrostatics and/or electromagnetics to yield a saleable WO₃concentrate
  

Mining (Scott Wilson Study):

Based upon the current Indicated Mineral Resources, Scott Wilson Mining designed an open pit for the first 10 years of an operation at a production rate of 500,000 tonnes per annum,  with a stripping ratio of around 8:1.  Subsequent mining would be by underground methods.

Evaluation:

In September 2010, Scott Wilson Mining reported on a Base Case operation of 500,000 tonnes per year by contract open pit mining with averaged production of 130,000 mtus of WO3 per year (155,000 mtus average during the period of operation at design production capacity) from a simple and low cost gravity plant. This plant would comprise three stage crushing followed by jigs and spirals for gravity pre-concentration, with flotation clean-up of the pre-concentrate to produce an industry standard 65% WO3 (scheelite) concentrate. Average life-of-mine metallurgical recoveries of 79% were adopted based on testwork results.  Plant waste tailings products would be produced in a “dry” sand form.  The evaluation study indicated  that this operation would be capable of generating Euro 9.3M per year of averaged pre-tax operating cash flows for 10 years, at the then current tungsten price of US$245/mtu WO3.  At a then forecasted higher tungsten price of US$290/mtu, averaged pre-tax operating cash flows for the Base Case project rise to Euro 13.7M per year.

The initial capital cost for the Base Case was Euro 29.9M, and the average unit cash operating cost shown is Euro 80.4/mtu.

Ormonde's priorities are now on completing the feasibility study (of which an details of an irterim feasibility report can be found here) on a tungsten operation based on a resource/reserve suitable to support an initial 9 year mine life, although it is anticipated that the deposit is likely to support a much longer life operation.  This work includes definitive metallurgical testwork to establish the optimum pre-concentrate clean-up circuit and facilitate the design and costing of a process plant. Environmental base-line studies have also been initiated as part of the permitting process for a mining operation.  The current schedule would see Barruecopardo in production by late 2013.

Valdegallegos Prospect: A separate tungsten system is located one kilometre to the west of Barruecopardo, the Valdegallegos Prospect, Fig 2 and 9. There are a number of old mine workings on the various veins within this system, Fig 15. One of two holes drilled into Valdegallegos yielded a high-grade intersection of 0.9m @ 2.7% WO₃. The drilling to date has been focussed on the Barruecopardo System, but follow-up drilling is planned for the Valdegallegos Prospect.

Other Prospects: Several smaller historic tungsten workings and prospects, located on a large permit area around Barruecopardo, demonstrate the extent of the Vitigudino tungsten province in Salamanca (Fig-16).  Of these workings the most significant is Saturno, which comprises a NW-SE zone of tungsten and gold-bearing quartz veining ranging from 3 -8 metres in thickness. This zone was mined historically for tungsten to shallow depths (< 40 metres) by an open pit some 300 metres long.  There are few historic records available for this operation; however the vein system was investigated for its gold potential in the early 1980s through detailed sampling from the base of the pit and also by widely spaced drilling to test depth extensions of the mineralisation below the base of the pit.  Better drill intersections include 2.0m grading 1.2% WO3 and 7.4 g/t gold and 6.0m grading 0.3% WO3 and 1.0 g/t gold.

• Fig-16 Tungsten prospects and occurrences on the Salamanca permit area

• Barruecopardo Tungsten Project Review (0.83 MB, pdf)