Shaw River reports 60% increase in Namibia manganese resources

PERTH (Scrap Monster): Shaw River Manganese Limited (ASX: SRR), an Australian based manganese explorer and developer, has reported a 60% increase in the Mineral Resource for its 75.5% owned Otjozondu Manganese Project in Namibia to 10.7 million tonnes, providing a strong foundation for its plans to become a manganese producer.

The updated resource inventory includes a maiden Indicated Resource of 3.8 million tonnes located within the existing mining lease at Otjo which will underpin Shaw River’s production aspirations.

The ongoing feasibility study is being extended to be completed later in 2012, targeting initial production rate of up to 500,000 mt/year. The next round of exploration and resource drilling is set to start in April 2012; and is targeting a further increase in the resource inventory to about 20 million mt by the third quarter of calendar 2012 by targeting strike extensions of the known deposits.

The company plans to continue drilling at Otjo to convert the exploration target of 30 million-50 million mt grading 23-27% manganese to joint ore reserves committee compliant resources.

Shaw River’s Managing Director, Vincent Algar, said that the manganese resources discovered to date at the Otjozondu project are accessible directly from surface using open cut methods, which is an advantage to the company.

"This characteristic makes the Otjo project considerably attractive compared to other world-class potential manganese deposits, which are extremely deep and often infrastructure constrained," he added.

Shaw River Manganese is a manganese focused mineral exploration company operating eight manganese projects: two projects located in Africa and six projects in Australia.