Tertiary Mining, Storuman Fluorspar Mine

A conventional open pit strip mining operation of 1.0 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) is envisaged for the Project, with a life of mine exceeding 20 years. Fluorite (Fluorspar) Mine. Waste rock material generated from the stripping operations will be used to construct the tailings storage facility and excess waste material will be directly backfilled into the open pit during operations, effectively progressing pit closure during mining operations. The primary mining operations will consist of drilling, blasting, loading and hauling of ore and waste materials with free digging envisaged for the glacial till and shale overburden. Mining is envisaged to be undertaken by a mining contractor to reduce pre-production capital expenditure. Based on a preliminary Whittle pit optimisation carried out by SRK in March 2011, a total mineable tonnage of 27.8 Mt grading 10.2% CaF2 and producing 2.3 Mt of concentrate can be economically extracted using the Scoping Study metallurgical recovery of 81.9%. The average stripping ratio is 0.8 for the life of mine which equates to 22.2 Mt of waste produced.