Jun 12 2013
Canada Strategic Metals Inc. ("Canada Strategic Metals" or "the Company") is pleased to announce the results from a preliminary metallurgical test program using a small composite of surface samples obtained from the initial prospection campaign of 2012.
The six tests showed that the flake graphite could be easily recovered by standard straightforward processing; namely coarse grinding followed by flotation and gravity upgrading.
A grade of 80% Cg was easily obtained with 65.3% recovery, in open circuit and two stages of cleaning. A significant amount of clean flake graphite was separated by simple gravity processing from both the rougher and cleaner concentrates.
Due to the limited availability of samples for testing at this time, no optimization testing could be performed.
Additional tests are recommended to improve the overall graphite grade and recovery to the final products once samples are available.
The Company had submitted a composite, representing three (3) different geological units present on the property to Global Mineral Research Ltd (GMR Ltd) for this evaluation. This composite had been prepared with the grab samples obtained during the summer exploration program on the property (see news release dated July 24, 2012) which confirmed the presence of a large graphite bearing structure covering an area of approximately 7 kilometers by 1 kilometer with results of up to 22.04% Graphite in multiple parallel zones of 30-50 meters wide.
Another area had also been identified covering approximately 2 kilometers by 1 kilometer in multiple parallel zones of 20-50 meters wide, which included results of up to 18% Graphite. Samples from this area were not included in the composite.
The primary objective of the test program was to determine the recoverability of the graphite mineral by flotation and gravity concentration. The composite tested contained 5.1% graphite. The grind sensitivity tests, conducted in the range of 576 to 237 microns, indicated that the recoveries are not significantly affected by varying the primary grind size. Rougher flotation results achieved 80.4% graphite recovery in 10.9% mass yield with a grade of 34.5% graphite. Cleaning of the rougher concentrate was best achieved by incorporating gravity with the flotation process. The cleaner flotation with gravity test results indicated that both rougher and cleaner concentrates contained liberated graphite flakes easily upgraded by gravity. The final gravity concentrate showed 65.3% recovery with a grade of 80% in 3.8% mass yield in open circuit.
Based on this preliminary information, it is expected that both recovery and grade can be significantly improved by fine tuning the process, using representative samples from drilling.
Corporate Update
In March, the company initiated the permitting process to complete a 1,500 meter drill program on the La Loutre property this spring. The objective of this 15-20 hole drill program will be to verify the areas of high-grade graphite results towards establishing a flake graphite resource at the La Loutre property by December 2013 and use a better representative samples to conduct optimization flotation testing. The company is still waiting for the permit to start drilling at the La Loutre project.
Meanwhile, the company is actually revising the available data from MRNF and work done to date for many of the Company's other projects to in consideration of a summer exploration campaign on the most prospective areas.
Finally, the Company also announces it has dropped its options on the Labelle and Tetepisca North properties based on further evaluation and current market conditions.
About the La Loutre Property
The La Loutre property consists of one large contiguous block of 42 mineral claims (25.09 km2), located approximately 117 km northwest of Montreal, in southern Quebec, and is situated within the highly prospective Central Metasedimentary belt of the Grenville geological province, host to many active graphite projects. At La Loutre, graphite is hosted in graphitic crystalline marbles and paragneiss, similar to the host stratigraphy at Timcal's Lac des Iles graphite mine, currently Canada's only producing graphite mine, which is located at only 53 kilometers West of the La Loutre property.