Restarting Hemerdon Mine and Directorate Changes

RNS Number : 8909S

Tungsten West PLC

19 July 2022

 

Tungsten West Plc

("Tungsten West", the "Company" or the "Group")

Restarting the Hemerdon Tungsten and Tin Mine

and

Directorate and Management Changes

Tungsten West plc (LON: TUN), the mining company focussed on restarting production at the Hemerdon tungsten and tin mine ("Hemerdon" or the "Project") in Devon, England, has concluded a re-evaluation of the options for bringing the Hemerdon Mine back into production and announces its new development plan (the "Plan").

The Plan has been developed in response to Global crises in power and diesel prices and the general inflationary environment for construction materials faced by the Company. Accordingly the Company has undertaken a re-optimisation of the March 2021 Feasibility Study ("BFS") in light of these increased cost input factors.

The Board of Tungsten West has reviewed the Plan and has also received a preliminary independent assessment from consulting metallurgist Mike Hallewell of MPH Minerals Consultancy Ltd, who concurs with the Plan in all material aspects.

The Board has now given its approval to proceed with detailed engineering design and to commence construction of the Hemerdon Project with immediate effect.

The Plan continues to envisage restarting production during H1 2023.

Development Plan:

The Plan has been developed after a three-month technical and commercial review of the assumptions that underlaid the BFS. Evaluation of different approach options has resulted in a new ramp-up schedule, new crushing strategy, new operating parameters for ore sorting, a re-purposing of equipment within the processing plant, and the production of a different specification of final tungsten concentrate product. The result of the Plan is a lower cap-ex requirement and a much lower diesel and power consumption whilst still delivering profitable operating margins.

The revised plan for the Project has been reviewed on a preliminary basis by Mike Hallewell (BSc, F.I.M.M.M., F.S.A.I.M.M., F.M.E.S, C.Eng) of MPH Minerals Consultancy Ltd.  The Company intends to continue investigating trade-off studies, continued value engineering and detailed cost estimates for the Project whilst it finalises the detailed design and front-end engineering for the Project. MPH will continue to work with the Company in further optimisation and implementation of the Plan.

The Project continues to benefit from current planning permission, a pre-stripped open pit along with significant infrastructure and sunk costs from previous operators. Under Tungsten West's ownership a complete refurbishment and upgrade of the processing plant has been undertaken with large sections of this project now complete.

Crushing: The BFS planned refurbishment of the existing primary and secondary crusher building has been replaced with the planned installation of a newly located semi-mobile crushing circuit utilising direct tip into the primary crusher. This reduces cap-ex, but more importantly op-ex by removing RoM pad double handling of ore.

Ore Sorting: Under the BFS seven ore sorters were planned to operate accepting 30% of the ore mined whist rejecting the remaining 70% as waste ("30% accept rate") which would result in recovering circa 88% of the tungsten at that stage. The new plan utilises just four ore sorters which will be run at an expected 9% accept rate for a circa 76% stage recovery. This allows a lower volume of higher grade ore to be processed at the concentrator stage which again reduces both op-ex and cap-ex.

Processing Plant Changes: Due to the lower accept tonnages being fed into the processing plant the current primary dense media separators are able to be replaced with repurposed secondary and scavenger dense media separators. This substantially reduces op-ex and cap-ex. Due to the higher grade feed into the plant stage recoveries are expected to improve during this stage. In addition, Tungsten West intends to produce a 45% WO-₃ concentrate rather than the previously planned 52% product by removing the reduction kiln from the refinery process. This will result in a slightly lower payability (circa 2 percentage points lower) but this is more than offset by increased recoveries due to the forecast losses in the kiln. Approximately 1.4 million litres per annum of diesel consumption is removed by not using the kiln.

The overall effect of the above changes is to reduce energy consumption within crushing, ore sorting and the processing plant by circa 30%.

New Mine Plan : Hemerdon will aim to process 2.1 mtpa of ore in year one, 2.6 mtpa in year two, before ramping up to steady state production of 3.5 mtpa throughput in year three (the BFS envisaged year one at 2.7 mtpa rising to steady state throughput of 3.5 mtpa.) This targets WO₃ in concentrate production of 2,200t, 3,000t, 3,900t, and tin in concentrate production of 320t, 430t and 600t in years 1, 2, and 3 respectively. A significant amount of waste stripping is able to be deferred to year 2 under the new mine plan, accelerating time to positive cash flow.

Beneficial cost impact of the Plan:

Final cost estimates and the associated definitive construction schedule for the Plan are still being received but the internal cap-ex estimate is in a £26m - £36m range. Of this, £3.1m has already been spent on new equipment. This compares to the BFS capex estimate of £35 million. At the time of the 21 April 2022 announcement due to the inflationary environment caused by the prevailing economic conditions the capex estimate for the BFS plan had increased to £54m.

Management Changes:

Tungsten West announces that CEO Max Denning will leave his role and the Board with immediate effect. Max was a co-founder of Tungsten West and the Board thanks him for his significant contribution during the Company's formative years.

Executive Vice-Chairman Mark Thompson has assumed the responsibilities of the office of the CEO. Mark Thompson was a co-founder of Tungsten West and has previously held senior management positions at commodity trader Trafigura and its investment division Galena Asset Management, global private equity fund Apollo Management as well as several junior mining and exploration companies. He is currently a director of TSX listed Meridian Mining and an advisor to LSE listed First Tin.

An operations and project delivery consultant is being engaged to strengthen management capabilities and reporting during the construction phase. Their remit will be to build the Hemerdon Project on time and on budget, with due regard for the safety of employees and contractors during construction together with the quality and operability of the completed facility.

Financing:

As of 30^th June 2022, Tungsten West had cash on hand of £22.9 million. Allowing for contingencies and working capital costs the Company will seek to raise debt or other non-equity capital to execute the development of the Project without additional dilution for shareholders. The company is in discussions with financing partners to provide this additional capital.

Further Updates

The company will update the market with final capex estimates and life of mine financial metrics as soon as it is able to do so. Further updates will be provided on a regular basis detailing construction progress.

Investor Presentation Webcast

Senior management of Tungsten West will host an investor presentation on Friday 22^nd July at 2pm to further explain the revised development Plan. Investors can access the webcast via the following: https://stream.brrmedia.co.uk/broadcast/62d598f10485375c36e3fc4b . A recording of the webcast will be available on the Company website a few hours following the conclusion of the webcast, as will the accompanying presentation.

Tungsten West's Executive Vice-Chairman, Mark Thompson, commented:

"In the face of some input costs multiplying in just a couple of months, I am very glad that we were able to pause development of the Hemerdon Project when we did. The Tungsten West team have demonstrated immense professionalism and capability in re-optimising the development plan within just three months. I remain convinced of the deep and strategic value of the Hemerdon deposit in light of current geopolitical events where security of supply of critical minerals becomes ever more relevant.

Our new plan reduces capital expenditure, lowers the ongoing operating costs by streamlining processes for greater energy efficiency, and maximises the operating margins. We can do all of this whilst maintaining the optionality to revert to the original plan should conditions allow in the future.

On a personal note I would like to thank Max for all of his energy and hard work over the last three years and I wish him well in his future endeavours."

This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of Regulation 596/2014 as amended by the Market Abuse (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019.

Enquiries

Tungsten West Mark Thompson Tel: [phone]	Strand Hanson (Nominated Adviser and Financial Adviser) James Spinney / James Dance / Abigail Wennington Tel: [phone]
Camarco (Financial PR) Gordon Poole / Emily Hall Tel: [phone] Email:  [e-mail]	Hannam & Partners (Joint Broker) Andrew Chubb / Nilesh Patel [phone] VSA Capital Group plc (Joint Broker) Andrew Raca / Andrew Monk [phone]

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