The Conversation (0)
Junior exploration and production company Cancana Resources (TSXV:CNY) started commercial mining at its Valdirâo manganese mine in Brazil.
In its trial mining, Cancana will be removing large-sized cobbles or boulders and stockpiling this ore. The company will be further researching and reviewing the manganese vein structures and occurences. Cancana’s Valdirâo mine site is seated on roughly 5 hectares on top of a ridge. In order to proceed with mining the manganese at the site, Cancana commissioned 2 dry screens in which the soils and manganese ore can pass through its first round of processing. The company intends to screen the manganese ore in stages, with its initial focus on dry screening the ore. Finer screening, crushing, washing and final sizing will be carried out at a later date.
On November 20, Cancana started the final stages of development of infrastructure and mine site preparation, in order to set up its commercial mining operations at Valdirâo. The company anticipated that it would take roughly 10 days to complete infrastructure plans which included establishing a gated access, fencing to delineate roadways and areas of mining, as well as grading and access roads and traversing road cuts across hillside and mining areas.
Andrew Male, president and CEO of Cancana, commented, “[t]he commencement of the development of the infrastructure and mine site preparatory work, is a major step towards the commencement of mining. We are very excited about this progress as it is another milestone towards becoming a producing mine.”
Valdirâo has a NI 43-101-compliant inferred resource of 35,000 tonnes of manganese with an average grade of 54 percent.
Manganese market
According to SMM, manganese ore prices was little changed last week, barring a RMB 0.5/mtu decline in South African high-iron manganese ore.
Platts reported that Japanese production of silicomanganese was at a record low in September, “with market sources attributing this largely to two of the three producers shifting their domestic operations to less power-intensive ferromanganese production and moving silicomanganese production to Malaysia.”
Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, reported production of just 252 mt of silicomanganese in September, a sharp decline last years’s 3,036 mt as well as a 67% decline from output of 756 mt in August.
Securities Disclosure: I, Vivien Diniz, hold no investment interest in any of the companies mentioned.