Century Iron Mines (TSE:FER) saw its shares rally Thursday, exceeding its 50-day average trading volume, a day after the company reported a maiden resource for its Hayot Lake iron deposit in Quebec.
Shares of the miner rose 5 per cent as of Thursday late morning, at $1.05. In the last month, its stock is up by almost 4 per cent.
The company called the resource report a "defining milestone" for the deposit, which is part of the Attikamagan iron project.
The Hayot Lake iron deposit is now estimated to contain an inferred mineral resource of 1.723 billion tonnes grading an average of 31.25 per cent total iron, at a cut-off grade of 20 per cent total iron.
“Only 18.5 kilometres from Schefferville; the Hayot Lake iron deposit is well located in the Labrador Trough iron ore mining camp,” said president and CEO Sandy Chim on Wednesday.
“Schefferville is where the existing operating rail infrastructure begins connecting to the Port of Sept Iles, where the Port Authority and a number of miners are expanding the capacity of the port by 50 million tonnes per annum.
“Having close to 2 billion tonnes of iron ore in resources at Hayot Lake is a defining milestone laying the solid foundation to expand from our initial Joyce Lake mining plan targeting production in 2015.”
The Attikamagen iron project includes one group of claims straddling the boundary between the provinces of Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador.
The property includes 405 designated cells located in Québec - Hayot Lake - and 617 claims located in Labrador and Newfoundland - Joyce Lake - covering an aggregated area of around 34,348 hectares.
A winter drilling program at Century's Attikamagen project in Quebec last year targeted direct shipping ore (DSO) potential at Joyce Lake, and taconite potential at Hayot Lake.
DSO mines are typically rarer than the magnetite-bearing banded iron formations, but are considerably cheaper to mine and process as they require less beneficiation due to the higher iron content. Export-grade DSO ores are generally in the 62 to 64 percent iron range.
Taconite, on the other hand, has been mined in North America for a number of decades as its constancy of ore characteristics on a very large scale has been an important source of iron supply for the US steel market for many years.
The finer grain size of taconite requires less energy costs for grinding compared with other coarser grain iron ores, and is used for making iron ore pellets - demand for which is expected to grow faster than any other iron product in the seaborne market.
Earlier this week, Century Iron unveiled recent drilling results from its Joyce Lake DSO prospect at the Attikamagan project. The iron ore miner said the first batch of assay results confirmed a zone of high grade iron mineralization at Joyce Lake, with intercepts up to 54 metres over 60 per cent total iron and with an average of 6.09 per cent silica.
Assays are still pending for a remaining 45 holes, the company said, adding that following the receipt of all the results, an NI 43-101 compliant resource estimate will be initiated - with a completion target set for year-end.
Century Iron Mines is Canada's largest holder of iron ore land claims and it is backed by two Chinese strategic partners through financing and off-take agreements: MinMetals and WISCO International Resources, a unit of Wuhan Iron & Steel, also known as China's third-largest steel producer.
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