Savannah Resources Plc (LON:SAV) Chief Executive Officer David Archer caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the completion of the pilot plant construction, the status of the project and the current mineral sands market setting
Q1: David, we note the pilot plant construction completion and that the commissioning is underway, what do you see as the significance of today’s announcement?
A1: I think firstly, probably a demonstration of intent in that Savannah Resources are really prosecuting this project with great vigour and I think it also clearly demonstrates the execution capacity of our executive team in that we’ve been able to bring this project into successful construction, both on time and on budget.
Q2: How would you describe the status of the project at the moment?
A2: Well, we’re still maintaining a very high tempo of activity, really, we’ve been very pleased with the results during the course of this year.
Of course, just to allow the listeners to understand where we’ve got to, we drilled the project earlier in the year and we increased the resources up to 4.4 billion tonnes at 3.9% total heavy minerals. We completed, successfully, a scoping study which defined a very attractive project, we’re now working on a more definitive proposal with a preliminary feasibility study and we started the construction of the pilot plant and that’s been now completed.
In terms of going forward from here, we’ll be maintaining that similar sort of tempo, both the commissioning of the pilot plant and we’re looking to lodge a mining lease application in Mozambique in the next month or two. Of course, moving into 2018, we hope to deliver on the preliminary feasibility study and of course, move into a feasibility study with the intent of delivering a mining project in 2020.
Q3: How do you see the current mineral sands market setting?
A3: Well, very positive. I’ve just come back from Hong Kong where I went to the TZMI annual conference which is probably the major mineral sands event annually, globally, and it was a very very positive message that came out of that conference. There’s very good demand and the industry seems to be calling out for a new major producer of titanium feedstocks and we think that Savannah Resources’ Mutamba project is really ideally placed to deliver to that emerging production deficit in the early 2020’s.
