Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with Impact Minerals (ASX:IPT), Managing Director Dr Mike Jones
Lel Smits: Impact Minerals has advanced its Lake Hope High Purity Alumina project toward a definitive feasibility study with the pilot plant program now underway at Edith Cullen University. During the last quarter, joint venture partner Kuniko also intersected mineralization in every hole at the Commonwealth Silica Hill Gold-Silver project, including a new discovery at Silica Hill. I’m joined today by Managing Director Dr Mike Jones to discuss the last quarter’s progress.
Lake Hope DFS Progress, Commonwealth Discovery and Commonwealth Silica Hill Catalysts. Mike, welcome back to the Stock Network.
Mike Jones: Thanks, Lel, always great to be here.
Lel Smits: Likewise, great to have you on. And you’ve been doing a lot in terms of Lake Hope. You’ve reached key milestones, including that pilot plant commencement, also process optimization.
Mike, what do these achievements mean for progressing towards a definitive feasibility study?
Mike Jones: Yeah, so the pilot plant is a key part of the whole definitive feasibility study decision. And we’ve been mostly working on that with Edith Cullen University underneath the CRCP research grant that we got from the federal government. They’ve done some really interesting and certainly technically advanced work just using membranes on the flow sheet, in particular at the front part of our process.
Our process is basically three stages. First stage, we take the lake clays, everyone knows that we’re going to mine the top two meters of Lake Hope, truck it into Perth, and we’re going to leach it in an alkaline leach and we produce potash as a byproduct. There’s a lot of water balance associated with that and many hydrometallurgical process flow sheets fall over with that water balance.
And we believe that we’ve solved that problem now with Edith Cullen University. And so we’re now in the process of starting to build the pilot plant for that area. The second stage is hydrochloric acid leaching.
Edith Cullen has now completed a huge amount of test work on that to optimise that. And we’ll be moving towards piloting that as well within the next month or so. So those two things together are a huge part of movement towards production on the Lake Hope process, sorry, project, I should say.
So a lot of work and development being done there in the last quarter.
Lel Smits: Fantastic. When it comes to the Commonwealth Discovery, Kuniko intersected mineralisation in every drill hole and also made a new discovery at Silica Hill.
What do these results mean for the project’s growth?
Mike Jones: So Commonwealth is one of our legacy exploration assets. We will retain a 30% free carried interest in that to a decision to mine. And we’ve always been very enthusiastic about that project.
It’s a very unique deposit. It’s a massive sulphide. It’s got some very high grade gold and silver.
And we discovered a related vein, gold and silver vein deposit called Silica Hill during our work there. And it’s got some spectacular grades. The last phase of drilling that Kuniko did, they had a half a metre vein at 27 grams per tonne gold and 2% silver.
And they’re drilling now to follow that up and also extend mineralisation elsewhere on the project. So we’re looking forward to A, some great drill results and B, probably a significant increase in the resource later this year after they’ve completed this particular program. So yeah, people should keep their eye on KNI, ASX code, and for some exciting drill results in the weeks ahead.
Lel Smits: Great. And in terms of our catalysts for the broader group with work advancing across Lake Hope, Salmon Gums and also Commonwealth Silica Hill, what are the key catalysts and priorities for the remainder of the year?
Mike Jones: So for the remainder of the year, obviously getting the pilot plant up and running is our big focus for the Lake Hope project. In parallel, we’re probably about three quarters of the way through the scoping study on the potash and hydrochloric acid project that we believe has got real legs.
That’s the Salmon Gums project. And that will be the first look at the economics of that. That’s a more of a conventional mining project to produce fertiliser and acid.
We believe there’s fantastic markets for those in Australia right now, in particular with all the geopolitical events in the Middle East. So we’re looking forward to that. That should come in the next month or two.
Obviously, we’ve got Caneco in the background drilling Commonwealth. We’ve got our investment in Illuminis. It was a busy quarter for Illuminis as well.
We had some results back from the work that we’ve done with C4V on how good the HPA could be in the battery sector. And first tick for the first milestone pass there. So that’s a great outcome.
And we’re still working on our Broken Hill project in the background, more traditional gold, silver, copper, lead and zinc. And we’ll have some exciting news for that as well going forward. So another action-packed end to the year.
Lel Smits: Mike, thank you for the update from Impact Minerals. Thanks very much, Lel.
Ends