Impact Minerals: Game on – A “unique” HPA resource
Impact Minerals Managing Director Mike Jones 3AW & 6PR Bulls N' Bears Report
Listen to ASX-listed Impact Minerals Managing Director Mike Jones talk to Matt Birney on the Bulls N’ Bears Report about Impact’s huge maiden high purity alumina resource that Impact says has “unique” geology.
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Impact Minerals currently has a suite of exploration projects that cover gold, silver, lead, zinc, copper, nickel and platinum. Its flagship project however is the Lake Hope High Purity Alumina project to the south west of Norseman that Impact has the right to earn up to 80 per cent of. And in what amounts to a major milestone for Impact Minerals, the company recently tabled a solid maiden HPA resource at Lake Hope and managment is now busy working on the financial metrics of mining it.
RADIO INTERVIEW - TRANSCRIPT
Matt Birney - Welcome to Bulls N' Bears.Brought to you today by mineral explorer, Impact Minerals.
Matt Birney - ASX code: IPT
Matt Birney - I'm Matt Birney and I'm joined now by the Managing Director of Impact Minerals, Mike Jones.
Matt Birney - Hi, Mike.
Mike Jones - Hi, Matt. Great to be here.
Matt Birney - Okay, so Impact Minerals currently has a suite of exploration projects that cover gold, silver, lead, zinc, copper, nickel and platinum.
Matt Birney - Its flagship project, however, is the Lake Hope High Purity Alumina project to the southwest of Norseman that Impact has the right to earn up to 80 per cent of.
Matt Birney - And in what amounts to a major milestone for Impact Minerals, the company recently tabled a solid maiden HPA resource at Lake Hope, and management is now busy working on the financial metrics of mining it.
Matt Birney - Okay, Mike, hit me with the numbers. What's the maiden
high purity alumina resource at your Lake Hope project west of Norseman?
Mike Jones - Matt, it is three and a half million tonnes at 25 per cent alumina, which is pretty high grade globally, and 90 per cent of that is in what we call the indicator category, which means we're very confident that it's there and it's real.
Mike Jones - And that means that it contains about 880,000 tonnes of alumina. And we believe that we can convert much of that into high purity alumina.
Matt Birney - Let's talk purity, because I know the market typically wants 99.99 per cent purity when talking HPA. Can you get to those levels?
Mike Jones - Yes, we can. We've shown it in the laboratory and we're currently in a prefeasibility study to show that we can scale it up to commercial tonnages.
Matt Birney - So copper sells for about, I think US$8,500 a tonne at the moment, and nickel goes for about $22,000. How much does high purity aluminium sell for and what is it typically used for?
Mike Jones - Well, it's right up there in the value with nickel, so anything between 15 and $25,000 US dollars a tonne. And there are three main uses.
Mike Jones - It occurs in the separators in a lithium-ion battery. It stops them exploding. For those of you who remember the Samsung phones blowing up a few years ago, that's what HPA does, stops that happening.
Mike Jones - It's also used in LEDs and micro LEDs. So most TV screens now are having HPA inside them. And similarly, if you look at your phone, every sapphire glass has also got HPA there on the front of the screen.
Mike Jones - And those markets are growing rapidly at sort of 20 to 30 per cent a year right now.
Matt Birney - Now, I've heard you describe the Lake Hope HPA resource as unique. What's special about it?
Mike Jones - Well, in the top two metres of the lake, which is where all that alumina is, there's a significant amount of contained metal there, and it's free digging.
Mike Jones - That means that basically, we can turn up with a digger and two trucks and ship it off site. There's no stripping, there's no waste. We don't need any water, we don't need any power.
Mike Jones - So we're going to be able to build our plant off site in somewhere like Kalgoorlie or Perth, and that entire process is going to be much easier to permit from an environmental perspective.
Mike Jones - And we believe that as a result, we can be on the fast track to production.
Matt Birney - Very quickly, when are you likely to wrap some financial metrics around the project?
Mike Jones - We're looking to release our initial scoping study in July, and at that point, people will see the tremendous value that's locked up in Lake Hope.
Matt Birney - Mike Jones from Impact Minerals.
Matt Birney - Thanks for joining me on Bulls N' Bears.
Matt Birney - And remember, we're only here to give you information, not advice, which you should, of course, seek independently.
Matt Birney - I'm Matt Birney, and this is Bulls N' Bears.
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