Régua is a high-grade tungsten deposit development located 20 km from the Tarouca exploration project. The Régua / Tarouca mine hub forms part of W Resources’ primary mine development priorities for 2015 along with La Parrilla.
Régua has a JORC 2008 compliant resource of 4.46 million tonnes at 0.308% WO3 and the objective of the drilling programme is to increase this resource during H1 2015. It is open on all flanks of the deposit and at depth providing substantive potential for growth in the size of the deposit. A trial mining licence was granted for Régua in June 2014 which gives W the opportunity to develop Régua and further examine the opportunities to integrate it with Tarouca to form a significant mining hub in Northern Portugal.
The initial phase of the Régua development programme is a targeted drilling and metallurgical programme. An initial 5 tonnes of the near surface tungsten ore will be mined and trucked 350 km to La Parrilla for test processing. In parallel, W has commenced a 2,000 metre diamond core drilling campaign to appraise lateral and depth extensions to existing mineralisation. The drilling platforms for the first 4 of 8 holes have been set up and drilling has commenced with the first phase scheduled for completion in Q1 2015. Mine and metallurgical samples and geotechnical data will be collected to provide data for mine development and optimal tungsten processing.
Michael Masterman, Chairman of W Resources said "We are targeting a total of 10 million tonnes of tungsten at 0.3% WO3 through the combined Régua / Tarouca hub, to form the cornerstone of a world class tungsten mine development. We are very efficiently using targeted capital spending to drive the growth and ultimately the significant value of this important asset. We are confident that the drilling and metallurgical work will advance and add substantial value to this mine development."
