Kelly's Basin
Kelly's Basin is hosted in the unweathered Thatuna granodiorite within a lobe of the Idaho Batholith. Defined resources lie in a border zone along the interface between the main-stage medium-grained and porphyritic Thatuna batholithitic rocks and the Precambrian metasedimentary country rocks. More rapid cooling in these contact zones produced a medium grained, non-porphyritic granodioritic unit, which, where unaltered, contains a primary assemblage of plagioclase, K-feldspar, quartz, biotite and muscovite. At Kelly's Basin, i-minerals has identified significant near surface volumes of the unweathered border phase of Thatuna granodiorite resulting in an initial resource of 10.78 million tons of Thatuna granodiorite, estimated to contain 4.31 million tons of feldspar and 1.72 million tons of quartz. This resource, once verified as part of ongoing feasibility by SRK Consultants (USA) Inc. of Denver Colorado, represents over 25 years of production.i-minerals is well along the feasibility process. Extensive metallurgical testing completed to date has demonstrated i-minerals can produce a high quality sodium feldspar ("Na-spar") and quartz products from the Kelly's Basin ores. This metallurgical work has resulted in the design of a flow sheet that includes a closed circuit standard flotation process that does not discharge water. The mine plan is nearing completion with the entire deposit defined into 20 foot by 20 foot by 20 foot blocks over 10 levels of the open pit. Environmental assessment including geotechnical work around the proposed process facility and tailings site and finalization of the customer market studies are the primary outstanding matters necessary to complete the move from feasibility to the final economic analysis stage. Permitting is moving in parallel with the feasibility and is expected to be completed at approximately the same time.
The Kelly's Basin mill facility is designed to produce both high quality feldspar and quartz products through a standard flotation process, and high pure quartz products through multi-stage flotation from the Kelly's Basin deposit, potassium feldspar products from the MC Tailings deposit and process the quartz - potassium feldspar component contained in the grit fraction of the primary clay ores found at the WBL Pit Area. The mill facility is designed to meet currently forecast customer demands running 5 days per week 24 hours per day. Increasing throughput to 7 days per week 24 hours per day allows for an increase in production of up to 33% with no additional capital costs.
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