Manganese X Energy Corp. has filed a technical report on Sedar of a Preliminary Economic Assessment (the “PEA”) for its wholly owned Battery Hill manganese project, located near Woodstock, N.B.. T
The PEA was prepared by Wood Canada Ltd., an independent engineering service group with extensive experience in mining and mineral processing. The PEA technical report was prepared in accordance with the requirements of National Instrument 43-101 – Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (“NI 43-101”), has an effective date of May 12, 2022, and has a report date of June 24, 2022.
PEA Highlights (All dollar values are in US dollars unless otherwise stated) are reported in a note:
- Robust Economics
- After-tax net present value using a 10% discount rate (“NPV10“): $486 million
- 25% internal rate of return (“IRR”)
- Capital costs (“CAPEX”) of $350 million with a payback of 2.8 years
- Average annual gross revenue of $177 million per year over the 47 years Project life
- Average annual gross revenue of $220 million over the first seven years
- Life of mine (“LOM”) operating cost (“OPEX”) of $122/t material processed
- HPMSM Market Price
- Base case market price of $2,900/t for battery-grade high-purity manganese sulphate (“HPMSM”) is well below the long-term forecast price of $4,200/t HPMSM estimated by CPM Group
- Price Sensitivity
- Base case undiscounted after-tax cashflow: $3.4 billion
- Sensitivity analysis shows after-tax NPV10 reaches $914 million at $4,200/t HPMSM
- Long Mine Life
- 40-year mine production life and seven years of stockpile reclaim feed
- Total LOM production of 3.2 million tonnes of HPMSM
- Average annual HPMSM production of 68,000 tonnes over the LOM
- Average annual HPMSM production of 84,000 tonnes in the first seven years of production
- Low Environmental Impact
- Flowsheet produces a filtered residue leach product with initial acid-base accounting and non-acid generating test results showing no acid drainage risk
- Project Objectives
- Project is now advancing towards a pilot project, pre-feasibility study as well as advancing a drilling program to upgrade and expand manganese resources
The PEA is preliminary in nature; it includes Inferred Mineral Resources that are considered too speculative geologically to have the economic considerations applied to them that would enable them to be categorized as Mineral Reserves, and there is no certainty that the preliminary economic assessment will be realized. Mineral Resources are not Mineral Reserves and do not have demonstrated economic viability.