On February 11, UK-based iron ore miner London Mining announced that it has received the final parliamentary approvals on the fiscal incentives, the proposed mine and logistics plan and environmental permitting for the Marampa licence area, now commencing with full development of the project to produce both tailings and primary ore.
The Marampa project is located 120 km from Freetown in Sierra Leone and is 100 percent owned and operated by London Mining through its Sierra Leone subsidiary London Mining Company Ltd. London Mining is developing a tailings reprocessing operation and is defining the main primary resource to constrain the parameters of an enlarged operation with steady state capacity of 5-8 million mt per year. The company is commencing with full development of its 1.5 million per year tailings starter operation for an initial capital cost of $80 million.
As SteelOrbis previously reported, London Mining has completed 2,700 m of drilling on the Masaboin and Ghafal primary ore deposits and plans a further 6,000 m drilling in 2010. This work is intended to allow an initial estimate to be reported in accordance with the JORC Code for the primary ore resource and for a pre-feasibility study to be completed by the end of 2010.