Metro Mining enhances intended takeover offer for Cape York Gulf Alumina

Metro Mining has enhanced bulk export prospects for its bauxite holdings on Queensland’s Cape York Peninsula with the definition of expanded direct shipping ore (DSO) resources.

This follows immediately on Metro’s proposed takeover of Gulf Alumina, a potentially game-changing acquisition which could result in a substantially larger company benefiting from a number of operational synergies and economics of scale.

The company’s Cape York DSO bauxite resource has increased to 65.3 million tonnes with the delineation of 11.7 million tonnes in the indicated resource category at the broader Bauxite Hills project’s BH2 deposit.

This material has been confirmed as suitable to produce a beneficiated product with grades of 49.1% total aluminium oxide, 37.4% available alumina and 6.7% reactive silica. The average thickness of the bauxite mineralisation is 1.6 metres and the average overburden thickness is 0.5 metres.

Information from other deposits in the Weipa area, such as Bauxite Hills and Metro’s Pisolite Hills project – where resource estimates have been previously established, provides additional confidence in the geological model at BH2.

BH2 is located in Western Cape York on the north bank of Port Musgrave estuary, near Mapoon and 10 kilometres south of Bauxite Hills, where resources were estimated earlier this year at 53.6 million tonnes of DSO bauxite and 48.2 million tonnes of marketable DSO bauxite reserves.

As part of its Environmental Impact Study submissions, Metro will submit terms of reference for a 5 million tonnes per annum mining operation at Bauxite Hills.