ASX: VKA - Viking Mines
- Matt Birney
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
Viking Mines: 200% share price hike - grade is King when it comes to Tungsten
Viking Mines Managing Director Julian Woodcock on 3AW, 2GB, 4BC & 6PR Bulls N' Bears Report
Listen to ASX-listed Viking Mines Managing Director Julian Woodcock talk to Matt Birney on the Bulls N’ Bears Report about the exquisite metallurgy advantages of Viking’s US based tungsten play and what they mean.
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RADIO INTERVIEW - TRANSCRIPT
Matt Birney - Welcome to Bulls N' Bears, brought to you today by tungsten explorer Viking Mines.
Matt Birney - ASX code: VKA
Matt Birney - I'm Matt Birney and I'm joined now with the managing director of Viking Mines, Julian Woodcock.
Matt Birney - Hi, Julian.
Julian Woodcock - Hey there, Matt.
Matt Birney - Well, Viking Mines has been getting a bit of traction lately after picking up a suite of tungsten assets in Nevada, USA. The company’s Linka project already boasts historical mining and some solid drill hits. And with rising tungsten prices behind it – and Viking shares have run over 200 percent from about 0.6c in December to 1.9c. Now the company has just released its first all important metallurgical testwork from Linka and the numbers didn't disappoint.
Matt Birney - Julian, we'll get to those metallurgical tests in a minute, but tell me when was this project last mined for tungsten and at what grades?
Julian Woodcock - Yes, Matt. This was last mined in the 1950s and at a grade of half a percent.
Matt Birney - Now metallurgy is a big hurdle for a lot of these critical minerals projects. In your recent test work, I understand you used a simple gravity circuit. What grade did you input and what concentrate grade did you get out the other end?
Julian Woodcock - Yeah, we had an input grade of 1.4% tungsten and with the 16-fold uplift in the gravity circuit, we achieved 22.9% tungsten.
Matt Birney - And what sort of metal recoveries did you get in that first pass gravity circuit work?
Julian Woodcock - Yeah, we got north of 63% in the gravity test work.
Matt Birney - And are you happy with that? Can you push it even further or will that do the job?
Julian Woodcock - We will definitely push it further. So normally after the gravity circuit you take it to a flotation circuit, which that testworks on going, and that will uplift the grade and the recovery even more and we can optimize the gravity. This was just initial sight of results. So yes we'll uplift that.
Matt Birney - Now for the technologically challenged, without getting too in depth, why are good results from a gravity circuit important? What's the alternative if the ore won't upgrade well from gravity?
Julian Woodcock - Gravity is the first easiest step. You just use the density of the material and you've got very cheap low-cost processing equipment. There's no chemicals needed. So the next steps or the alternatives are using flotation which requires more infrastructure and the like. So having good gravity means we can pursue a low-cost CapEx solution using modular equipment.
Matt Birney - Well let's talk grades for a moment. How does Viking's Linka project compare to other tungsten projects around the world? Everybody knows what a good grade is for gold for instance but not really tungsten right?
Julian Woodcock - Yeah. So half a percent is good grade. There's mines operating even lower than 0.1%, some big ASX numbers such as EQR, high market cap, they've got grades of 0.2% and 0.16% in their project and another one TGN has 0.11%. So we're substantially higher than that and we sit in the high-grade space for tungsten.
Matt Birney - What have tungsten prices done lately?
Julian Woodcock - Yeah, they've gone up five-fold over the last 12 months. $30,000 a tonne for APT, up to now trading at $185,000 a tonne.
Matt Birney - I'm guessing that's US dollars, right?
Julian Woodcock - Yes, that's all USD.
Matt Birney - Julian Woodcock from Viking Mines.
Matt Birney - Thanks for joining me on Bulls N' Bears and remember we're only here to give you information, not advice, which you should of course seek independently.
Matt Birney - I'm Matt Birney and this is Bulls N' Bears.
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