Following ongoing exploration activity of its Northern Limb projects, platinum group metals (PGMs) producer and developer Sylvania Platinum completed a scoping study on the Volspruit project in August 2024 to include resources from the South body, as well as estimates for both rhodium and ruthenium which had previously not been assayed for this project.

Mining consultancy SRK Consulting was commissioned by Sylvania in late 2023 to complete the scoping study to assess the economic upside resulting from an updated mineral resource estimate and include the additional South body resources and previously unreported PGMs.

The inclusion of the South body lifts the life-of-mine (LoM) for Volspruit from 8.7 years in 2022, to 14 years and increases the combined resource – containing platinum, palladium, rhodium and gold (4E) – from 15.4-million tonnes in 2022, to 28.24-million tonnes.

A mining schedule was produced from pit shells generated during SRK’s optimisation exercise, while a production rate of 150 000 t a month (1.8-million tonnes a year) was used for the 25-million tonnes of ore contained within the North and South bodies.

Both North and South bodies contain an average 4E grade over the life of the mine of 2.22 g/t, with the presence of 0.19% nickel and 0.06% copper also being detected.

Located on the southern end of the Northern Limb of the Bushveld Complex, about 16 km south of the town of Mokopane, Volspruit’s North pit contains 65% of the ore, with the remainder in the South body.

About 67% of the ore is from the indicated mineral resource category while the remainder falls into the inferred mineral resource category. Oxide and transitional ore accounts for 9% of the orebody.

Metallurgical testwork was completed by engineering, project delivery and operations management group DRA at State-owned minerals research organisation Mintek, on ore from both the North and South bodies.

From this testwork, 4E recoveries made up 71.6% at a grade of 74 g/t of 4E being achieved from fresh ore, while lower recoveries were obtained for the oxide and transitional ores. This resulted in a blending strategy being used in the production schedule.

“While we have slowed down some of our exploration studies . . . to align spend with the current PGM price environment, steady progress has been made to improve the understanding of our respective exploration assets and to further optimise future potential,” says Sylvania CEO Jaco Prinsloo.

He adds that the updated scoping study resulted in a significant increase in project pre-tax net present value to $69-million for a 14-year LoM, compared to $27.3-million NPV and nine-year LoM for the October 2022 study, while the internal rate of return is slightly lower at 17%.