African Minerals raises Direct Shipping Ore Resource at Tonkolili

African Minerals Limited is a mineral exploration, development and mining company, and is the developer and operator of the Tonkolili iron ore mine in Sierra Leone. The Company provides an update to its Direct Shipping Ore resource at Tonkolili.

Highlights;
1. JORC Compliant DSO Mineral Resource Estimate updated to 142.1 million tonnes grading 57.0% iron as at 31 March 2014.
2. 94% of the total Mineral Resource Estimate classified in the Measured and Indicated categories.
3. The delineation of an additional 59.5 MT of Direct Shipping Ore will considerably extend the life of DSO operations.
4. With a near term expansion of production capacity to 25 million tonne per annum and with saprolite processing currently expected to commence in 2016, the DSO operations (which will run concurrently with saprolite processing) will be expected to extend to circa 2020.
5. An updated saprolite resource, including optimized metallurgical parameters (yield, recovery and concentrate grade), is expected to be available by end Q2 2014.

This announcement presents an updated JORC Compliant Mineral Resource Estimate valid as of March 31st 2014, that supersedes AML's last published JORC Compliant Mineral Resource Estimate of 126.5 MT of DSO grading 58.1% Iron announced on December 16th 2010.

Mr Bernie Pryor CEO of African Minerals said that "The increase in the Tonkolili DSO resource is a significant event. The increased life of the DSO resource, now with over 90% classified in the Measured and Indicated resource categories, will allow the Company to produce a DSO product to 2020, and to take a longer term view regarding the current operations. Production of DSO will be concurrent with our near term plans to expand production to 25Mtpa and to move into a higher value saprolite hematite concentrate product from 2016.”

He said that "We are, of course, excited to embark on this next stage of our expansion, for which we expect to provide more information in due course. The first step of this expansion will be the publication of an updated saprolite resource later this quarter, incorporating the adjustments to the DSO resource as announced today."