106 - The International Resource Journal

116 AFRICA World Titanium ResourcesOn track to enter production in 2014,World Titanium Resources’ Toliara SandsProject continues to get better and betterLast TIMe we spoke to World Titanium Resources(ASX:WTR), chief executive Bruce Griffin was eagerto emphasise the quality of its Tier 1 Toliara SandsProject in Madagascar. With an estimated JORCresource of 707Mt at its flagship Ranobe mine, hehad good reason to be confident. No one expectedthe definitive engineering study (DES), completedmid-2012, to make that resource even bigger.“We increased the resource by 36 per centto 959Mt, which is very large,” reveals Griffin. “Itwasn’t something we were looking for but it iscertainly nice to have.” The resource’s containedtotal heavy mineral (THM) increased to 58.5Mt,with an average grade of 6.10% THM.Before the increase, WTR’s resource waslarge enough to keep the mine going for morethan 75 years. Now, it is big enough for a minelife exceeding 100 years. While not immediatelyuseful in terms of market value, this gives WTRexcellent long-term options for expansion. Withthis important fact in mind, WTR designed themine with an infrastructure capacity three timesthat required for the Starter Pit.“We could triple the mine capacity and, ifthe capital for the equipment required for eachincrement was equal to the costs from the DES,each would cost around US$85 million – thosewould be very low-capital expansions. A tellingfact is that if we tripled production, we would onlybe reducing the mine life from more than 100years to one of 30 years. This resource increasereinforces that this is a very large, long-life,very extendable asset.”Ticking all the boxesThe extra resource growth was just one of manygood results to come from the DES, which confirmedthe Ranobe mine to be a “low-risk, long-life,low-capital and high-margin project”.The Maiden Ore Reserve in Ranobe’s StarterPit came to 161Mt at 8.20% THM, providing a total