Platinum

Yubdo, Yubdo Exploration Licence Area, Ethiopia

Overview

In 2001 Minerva Resources, through its subsidiary GPMC, entered into a joint venture with a local entrepreneur, Mr Benti Tassisse (47%), to mine the Yubdo platinum deposit. Mining licences were issued, even though an optimum process flowsheet had not been established, nor a platinum resource defined. The mining licences cover 27.26 km2, within the Yubdo Exploration Licence, 100% held by Minerva Resources. The remaining 2% of YPDG is held by Dr Kebede Belete. More information about the mining operation can be found here.

Location

The Yubdo Mine is 520km almost due west from Addis Ababa. The road is tarred to Gimbi (460km from Addis) and the remainder of the road is gravel. Yubdo village and the mine site have recently been connected to the grid and an digital telephone centre is under construction in the village.

Exploration and Resources

Historically platinum occurrences at Yubdo were believed to be alluvial in origin. Recent work by the Minerva Resources team has demonstrated, however, that the platinum has a hydrothermal origin.

In 2006 Minerva Resources carried out a programme of pitting over the ridge above and to the southwest of the present small-scale mining operation southeast of Yubdo village, in order to estimate the resource in this small area. Thirty pits were completed on a 60m x 60m square grid covering an area of 420m x 240m. Each pit was hand dug at a nominal 75cm diameter down to decomposed bedrock encountered at an average depth of about 10m. Channel sampling at one metre intervals down the side of the pits returned platinum values ranging up to 1.8 g/t Pt, with acceptable repeatability of duplicate samples suggesting that conventional sampling and assay procedures are effective for establishing the total platinum resource.

Based on the results of the pitting GPMC has used a polygonal method to estimate a resource of 23,760 ounces (793kg) of platinum in 1,470,000 tonnes of laterite material with an average grade of 0.54g/t platinum within the limited area covered by the pitting programme. Importantly, the average grade of the laterite below a barren 1.5m soil layer was 0.82g/t platinum. The pitting programme also indicated that both laterite thickness and platinum grades are lower over the ridge area than on its flanks. Geological mapping shows that potentially mineralised laterite extends along strike for several kilometres on the Yubdo ultramafic intrusion.

Mapping of bedrock exposed in the pitting and in outcrop shows fractures containing quartz-carbonate with pyrite in the form of boxworks and planar fracture fillings occurring in zones trending east of north with generally steep westward dips, cutting the serpentinised dunites and pyroxenites of the Yubdo Ultramafic Complex. Pit sampling shows PGM values in this material relative to fresh rock which support the contention that PGMs are concentrated by hydrothermal action associated with zones of fracturing.

Should metallurgical test work demonstrate economically viable recovery of platinum from the ores Minerva Resources will carry out a more extensive exploration programme at Yubdo.

York Platinum, Sierra Leone

The York Peninsular Platinum Project is based on the Freetown Intrusion, a large layered basicultrabasic body that has been the source of historical alluvial platinum production, and has similaritiesto the Bushveld Intrusion of South Africa. A two-metre thick horizon with anomalous platinum values can be traced over a strike length of 8.5 kilometres. Rock and soil samples from weathered bedrock,assayed up to 0.84 g/t Pt.

The York Platinum project is a joint venture with Jubilee Platinum plc, operated by Jubilee Platinum. Minerva Resources’ interest under the York JV is currently 80%.