Centaurus Metals provide an update on ongoing metallurgical (pilot plant) testwork, key personnel appointments and other key work streams being progressed as part of the ongoing
Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) on its 100%-owned Jaguar Nickel Sulphide Project in north-eastern Brazil. The Company has received highly encouraging preliminary results from the pilot plant testwork program currently underway at ALS Metallurgy in Perth, reinforcing the quality of the Jaguar Project and supporting its potential to achieve excellent nickel recoveries and ultimately deliver a battery-grade nickel sulphate product for the rapidly growing Electric Vehicle (EV) market. Notwithstanding these excellent results, the delayed start to the pilot testwork program will see this program continue until the end of April, resulting in a delay to the important process flowsheet design for the refinery circuit. In light of this, the completion schedule for the Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) has been revised to late Fourth Quarter 2023, with a Final Investment Decision (FID) scheduled for Third Quarter 2024. Centaurus has completed comprehensive testing and analysis of the mineralogy of the Jaguar Nickel Project as part of which 3km of core, drilled by Centaurus, was selected for mineralogical testing. The core was selected from geologically important areas across the entirety of the resource base of the Project, including Jaguar South, Jaguar Central, Jaguar West, Jaguar Central North, Jaguar North, Jaguar North-East, Onça Preta and Onça Rosa. In addition to testing the geochemistry, 136 mineralogical composites were analysed by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and optical mineralogy. Extensive flotation testwork has been completed on the Jaguar nickel sulphide ore, with over 800kg of high-quality concentrate produced for feed to the Jaguar Pilot Plant. Variability composites were also prepared and tested. The flotation work has provided an extensive geometallurgical understanding for optimisation of the mining schedule. The testwork and geometallurgical analysis of the data has defined the following parameters: Concentrate mass recovery, Nickel sulphide recovery, Copper recovery, Sulphur recovery, Zinc recovery, Cobalt recovery, Ore hardness parameters. From the flotation testwork, Centaurus estimates that it will be able to recover approximately 94% of the sulphide nickel processed to a concentrate (which is approximately 78% of the total nickel at the average head grade in the MRE). Centaurus' piloting program for the Jaguar Project has been developed to provide detailed chemistry and process engineering data for the DFS and future front-end engineering design (FEED) requirements, as well as to ensure a high-quality nickel product is achieved for marketing and offtake discussions. The pilot program will also confirm the by-products that can be produced from the Jaguar process flowsheet so that all viable revenue streams from Jaguar can be considered in the project economics of the DFS. The Pilot Plant testwork commenced in January 2023 (at ALS Metallurgy in Balcatta, Western Australia) when the pilot facilities were made available to Centaurus following extensions of piloting work programs of other companies in the piloting queue. The scope of the Refinery piloting is split into four phases of work as follows: Phase 1: Concentrate feed preparation, pressure leaching, and copper solvent extraction. Phase 2: Calcium and zinc removal via solvent extraction. Phase 3: Cobalt/magnesium and nickel solvent extraction circuits. Phase 4: Nickel sulphate crystallisation plus zinc and cobalt hydroxide precipitate production. Phase 1 and Phase 2 have been completed with Phase 3 underway (due for completion by the end of March) and Phase 4 to be completed by the end of April 2023. Further bench scale testwork has been completed by ALS on the pilot feed concentrate to positively verify the scale up relationship between the bench scale tests and the results achieved in continuous piloting. This provides the Company with confidence in using small-scale batch testing for concentrate variability. Phase 2 & 3 of the pilot work defines the solvent extraction requirements of the flowsheet. Phase 2 is designed to extract zinc (for a by-product revenue stream) and soluble calcium from Phase 1 leach solution with minimal nickel loss, whilst Phase 3 is designed to initially extract cobalt (again for a by-product revenue stream) and magnesium followed by the purification of the nickel solution to produce nickel sulphate. From the Phase 2 solvent extraction work, three product/waste streams are produced: 1. A raffinate primarily containing nickel/cobalt/magnesium/manganese; 2. A zinc strip solution; and 3. A calcium strip solution for waste deposition.