TORONTO, Ontario, July 31, 2023 — Giyani Metals Corp. (TSXV:EMM, GR:A2DUU8) (“Giyani” or the “Company”), developer of the K.Hill battery-grade manganese project in Botswana (“K.Hill” or the “Project”), is pleased to announce a new Preliminary Economic Assessment (“PEA”) for K.Hill following the release of the significantly increased Mineral Resource Estimate (“MRE”), announced on July 13, 2023.
The PEA has a base case scenario (“Base Case”) considering a single production line to process K.Hill manganese oxide (“MnO”) material on-site to produce high-purity manganese sulphate monohydrate (“HPMSM”), with feed capacity of 200,000 tonnes per annum (“tpa”) over a 57-year life-of-project (“LOP”). An upside case scenario (“Upside Case”) is also evaluated, assuming an additional production line from Year 5 of operations taking total feed capacity to 400,000 tpa.
The PEA was prepared by CSA Global South Africa, an ERM Group company (“CSA Global”) in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (“NI 43-101”).
Highlights
- Base Case post-tax net present value using an 8% discount rate (“NPV8%”) of US$983 million (C$1.3 billion) and post-tax internal rate of return (“IRR”) of 29.4%.
- Updated MRE allows for high-grade mine scheduling and an average plant feed grade of 19.1% MnO in the first 5 years of production, with an average grade of 17.3% for the first 25 years of production.
- Base Case LOP is 57 years with total production of 3.6 million tonnes (“Mt”) of HPMSM.
- Upside Case post-tax NPV8% of US$1.6 billion (C$2.1 billion) and post-tax IRR of 33.5% over a 25-year LOP.
Total initial capital expenditure of US$284 million, with an additional US$208 million of expansion capital required in Year 4 of the Upside Case.
Danny Keating, President and CEO of the Company, commented:
“The recently updated MRE and PEA redefine K.Hill as an exceptionally high value, long-life project capable of supplying high quality, low carbon HPMSM to lithium-ion battery customers for more than 50 years.
With the operating parameters of the process plant already defined, the PEA demonstrates the economic value of the larger project life offered by the updated MRE and potential upside scale of operations. These are material improvements and provide the solid basis to commence a new and optimized feasibility study (“Optimized Feasibility Study”) to be completed in 2024, capturing all the learnings and results from the demonstration plant (“Demo Plant”) and the results and feedback from off-taker analysis of the HPMSM production. We believe K.Hill has the capacity to move materially down the cost curve as we refine our operating and procurement strategy, including possible over-the-fence production of key reagents by third parties.
In parallel with our activities on the PEA, we remain focused on our core objectives. The construction of the Demo Plant continues in Johannesburg, and we remain in regular contact with the Botswana Department of Environmental Affairs (“DEA”) for approval of our Environmental Impact Statement (“EIS”) submission, which is required for the Mining Licence application.
SOURCE: Giyani Metals Corp.
DATE: 31 July 2023