(MENAFN- ABN Newswire)
Atrum Coal NL ("Atrum" or the "Company") (ASX:ATU) (OTCMKTS:ATRCF) is pleased to announce it has stockpiled high grade anthracite at the Company's flagship JORC 1.57 billion tonne Groundhog Anthracite Project ("Groundhog") located in British Columbia Canada.
VP Operations Mr Ben Smith commented:
"We have extracted near-surface anthracite around the proposed mine portal at Groundhog North.
Large samples have been transported to the laboratory for bulk wash and quality testing and to the port of Stewart for a trial run of the ship loader."
FIRST HIGH GRADE ANTHRACITE STOCKPILE
The Company recently mobilised heavy equipment to the staging platform at Groundhog North including an articulated dump truck an excavator and a dozer. This equipment was used to complete various site preparation activities as part of the portal and pre-production exploration program.
Anthracite located in an S80 seam outcrop close to diamond drill hole DH14-06 has been extracted for customer sampling wash testing and ship loader trials at the Port of Stewart.
Due to the homogenous nature of the Groundhog deposit particularly in respect of 'coal rank' the S80 seam has comparable anthracite qualities to the S70 and S40 seam and provides an ideal source of Groundhog anthracite for customer testing.
The S80 seam measured 4.7m at 3.3m depth and represents potential upside for the PFS As previously noted the PFS is currently being updated to include the S80 and the S60 seams as well as the latest information from in-fill drilling on the S70 and S40 seams.
REGIONAL DRILLING
The Company has completed a regional exploration program following granting of new coal licence applications at Groundhog. The relatively small program was designed to test whether or not the current global resource envelope could be extended beyond the existing JORC resource model. Initial results confirm that the resource envelope continues laterally to other Atrum tenure not included in the current resource model.
The regional drill rig is consistently intersecting between 20m and 30m of cumulative drilled anthracite thickness outside the current resource envelope which is consistent with drilled thickness results experienced within the current resource envelope suggesting a material recalibration of JORC resources may be possible.
While the Company's primary focus is on near term production at Groundhog North these regional exploration results support Atrum's vision for a mulit-mine opportunity at Groundhog and the Company will seek to revise the global JORC compliant resource.
To view all figures and diagrams please visit:
http://media.abnnewswire.net/media/en/docs/ASX-ATU-687539.pdf
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