Premier African Provides Construction Update for RHA Tungsten Mine in Zimbabwe

Premier African Minerals Ltd. (LSE:PREM) announced an update on its construction process at its RHA tungsten project in Zimbabwe, which showed earthworks are ahead of schedule, all major orders for supply and reticulation of services have been placed and plant fabrication is on schedule for shipment to Johannesburg to RHA in May 2015.

As quoted in the press release:

The fabrication of the process plant is on schedule for transport from Appropriate Process Technologies (“APT”) in Johannesburg in May 2015. Mechanical equipment, including the mill is currently being shipped to the APT assembly workshop in Johannesburg where assembly of the various components are underway. The mill is expected to arrive in Durban, South Africa during mid April 2015. In addition APT is busy finalising the contracts for transport and erection on site. To date, Premier has paid US$1.46 million as a deposit towards the process plant which represents 70 percent of the total cost of the plant. A final payment of $664k is due once fabrication of the plant is completed.

Earthworks are ahead of schedule at 10 percent actual completion versus 3 percent planned completion.

Infrastructure development (power and water supply and reticulation) is currently considered to be on the critical path due to orders being placed five days behind schedule. Final orders were placed on Friday 20 March 2015. Current focus is on expediting these orders to pull the schedule back through early delivery.

George Roach, CEO of Premier African Minerals, commented:

Credit to our team and our contractors that at this time we remain on track for an on-time and onbudget completion and first production in early June 2015. What’s critical is finalisation of the final tranche of finance and I am hopeful that we will be able to update our shareholders on progress shortly. In this regard, it is worth noting that the responsibility for financing of the mine construction is that of RHA Tungsten Private Limited and that funds provided by Premier at this time are on loan. Repayment of loan debt includes the full cost of the finance in whatever form that cost may be.

Click here to read the full Premier African Minerals Ltd. (LSE:PREM) press release.