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The study was conducted on Project F, a small section of Tigers’ Amaam North license in far eastern Russia.
Tigers chief executive officer Craig Parry said the PFS proved that project F could be a low operating cost project with an average free-on-board cash cost of $US75 per ton of saleable product.
“The capital cost to initial production is estimated at $52 million and we expect to pay back its total capital budget in under two years.”
Parry added that the starter mine would support the expansion of production from Amaam and Amaam North.
To date only 3000m of drilling has been completed on the large Amaam North license block and focused only on Project F.
Drilling resulted in the delineation of an initial resource of 26.78Mt of coal.
The PFS was based on the assumption of an open pit containing 13.4Mt of ROM coal at a stripping ratio of 5:1, mined at a rate of 1.5Mtpa ROM coal.
Base case production is 9.6Mt of product coal, comprising 8.3Mt of coking coal and 1.3Mt of thermal coal.
The PFS identified the Project F to be an initial open cut project consisting of a mine, a coal handling and processing plant, associated infrastructure such as accommodation and buildings, transport and service roads and a coal terminal at the Beringovsky port.
Tigers said it intended to complete over 10,000m of drilling on the license over the next six months and expected the work would see the conversion of much of the 30-430Mt exploration target into resources.
Ongoing work programs will assess options to further enhance project value, including expanding the open pit resources through further drilling on the largely unexplored Amaam North licence, assessing the potential for underground mining of the thick seams below the Project F open pit and optimizing PFS outcomes.
“We’ve now commenced the bankable feasibility study – which is due for completion in Q12014 and for which Tigers is fully funded – and have also encountered strong interest in funding the development of Project F which we expect to bring into production in 2015/2016,” Parry added.
