Australian junior Arrow Minerals has hit the ground running at its Simandou North deposit, in Guinea, uncovering high-grade mineralisation in the area during the initial stages of drilling.

The first five holes, totalling 328 m of drilling, have yielded strong results, with assays including grades as high as 63% from surface samples.

In a statement on Tuesday, MD David Flanagan pointed out the significance of these early findings.

“We have made a very good start to our drilling programme, particularly given that this is just the start of the first systematic campaign to be drilled at the project and therefore we were still trying to establish some basic geological facts such as the orientation of the mineralisation,” he said.

In addition to the success in the banded iron formation drilling, Arrow has received promising first-pass metallurgical results from the canga-style iron targets at Simandou North. These results suggest that the grade could potentially be increased by about 4% through simple dry crushing and screening.

Flanagan emphasised that while it was still early days for the prospective direct shipping ore- (DSO-) style detrital canga iron mineralisation, the company intended to pursue those targets as a priority.

With five drill rigs on site, the company plans to complete more than 150 holes and 10 000 m of drilling in the June quarter.

To further expedite its plans, Arrow has enlisted the expertise of Jeremy Sinclair, a seasoned mine builder and mining engineer at industry giants such as  Rio Tinto and Atlas Iron over the last 30 years. Sinclair will lead an accelerated mining plan as part of Arrow’s “speed-to-market” strategy.

Further, the company has appointed key advisers to advance rail, port, shipping logistics, iron-ore marketing, metallurgical testwork and mining environmental impact assessments.

Atlas aims to develop a DSO operation “as soon as possible”, taking advantage of the multi-user rail infrastructure currently being developed for the giant nearby Simandou project.