Mining

Akora Resources continues to deliver premium iron grades from Bekisopa crushing trials

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By Danica Cullinane - 
Akora Resources ASX AKO crushing trials 2020 drill cores Bekisopa Iron Ore Project

Akora Resources will adopt 2mm as the optimal crush size for the Madagascan project’s resource estimation.

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Further crushing trials using ore from Akora Resources’ (ASX: AKO) flagship Bekisopa project in Madagascar have continued to deliver premium grades of up to 64% iron.

The company today reported further results from an ongoing trial on 2020 drill core, confirming a crush size of 3mm delivered a benchmark 62% iron product grade at low impurity levels while the 2mm crush size achieved a premium 64% iron ore fines product from massive and coarse disseminated iron mineralisation types.

As expected, the iron grade increased proportionally with finer crush sizes while the silica, alumina, phosphorous and sulphur levels decreased substantially. At the 2mm crush size, combined silica and alumina levels of 5.5% were achieved while phosphorous and sulphur levels decreased to 0.03% and 0.01%, respectively.

These latest results follow the high-grade results reported in April and June, demonstrating that the iron mineralisation along the Bekisopa strike length can deliver high-grade iron products.

Akora managing director Paul Bibby said these are “very favourable” results as a 2mm crush size is less costly than a finer crush and as a result, it will be adopted as the optimal crush size for the Bekisopa project’s JORC resource estimation.

“These trials confirm that a 2mm crush delivers quality high-grade iron ore fines products, therefore, we have decided for the JORC resource estimation to conduct product trials on drill core samples from the 2021 drilling campaign at 2mm and wet low intensity magnetic separation (wLIMS),” he said.

“This series of crushing trials confirm the favourable upgrading characteristics of the iron mineralisation at Bekisopa in achieving high-grade clean iron ore fines products.”

Crushing trials

Akora previously completed 12 processing trials incorporating 2mm crushing with wLIMS. Of these, 10 were on composites of massive and coarse disseminated iron mineralisation and achieved “excellent” high-grade clean iron product grades averaging 62.8% iron.

Another two trials were on lower head grade fine disseminated iron mineralisation with an average head grade of 20% iron and produced an iron product grade of 46% iron.

These early evaluations focused exploration and process trials on the massive and coarse disseminated iron mineralisation types and indicated where practical to blend in considered proportions of the lower grade mineralisation to achieve a saleable product.

Akora then completed trials to evaluate crush sizes ranging from 0.25mm-3mm to determine the optimal crush size to produce a saleable iron ore product.

The trials concluded that a coarse crush of 2mm and wLIMS processing achieves a high-grade 64% iron product and crushing to a finer size does not produce a materially better result, therefore making it unnecessary.

Akora’s Bekisopa project, together with its Tratramarina and Ambodilafa iron ore projects, cover about 308sq km in Madagascar.