Chatham Rock Phosphate Limited announced that its Queensland based lead project Korella North is advancing steadily towards becoming an operating phosphate mine. The company is currently preparing the Mining Lease Application for Korella North, a step that can be undertaken now that the NI43-101 independent report, announced last week, reported 600,000 tonnes of Indicated Resources and 2.1 million tonnes of Inferred rock phosphate Resources within EPM28589. The confirmation of this resource base has now enabled the definition of the proposed location of the initial Mining Lease Application.

The area the company have selected is a block containing 395,625 tonnes of phosphate. The area selected is where the 22m thick Monastery Creek Phosphorite Member outcrops and has minimal overburden to be removed to enable phosphate production. Only 96,448 bank cubic metres of overburden is required to be removed to enable production of 197,813 bank cubic metres of phosphate.

This low overburden ratio should result in reduced mining costs. The phosphate mining method will involve the selective recovery of individual plies and groups of plies in order to produce a 20% P2O5 direct shipping phosphate product. While phosphate sales will be directed initially into the domestic market, several enquiries for export of this soft rock low cadmium direct application 20% P2O5 have already been received.

Lodgment of the draft Mining Lease Application is planned for late September. While there is no fixed timetable for granting Mining Leases in Queensland, the company is working to achieve first production from Korella North by the start of H2 2024. In addition, to extend the Korella North exploration area EPM28589, an application has made for two additional two sub-blocks to the west of the existing tenement.

These two sub-blocks registered as EPM 28882 are designated Korella North 2. The company anticipated that in due course additional rock phosphate resources will be identified within both EPM 28589 and EPM 28882.