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James Pearson
Viking Mines appears to have wasted little time advancing its Linka tungsten project in Nevada, moving into early-stage processing design work using a nifty modular plant design as it pushes the critical minerals play towards a genuine development story.
Fresh from earlier metallurgical work that delivered a saleable concentrate grading an impressive 63.6 per cent tungsten trioxide, the company says consultant Mineral Technologies has now finalised a preliminary process flow diagram for the project.
The milestone marks a meaningful moment for Viking. A metallurgical win in the lab is now starting to translate into the practical nuts and bolts of mine development, including equipment sizing, indicative capital and operating costs and construction planning.
As part of the study, the company says it has adopted a notional processing rate of 43 tonnes per hour, emphasising this is not a production forecast, rather a planning assumption to help shape equipment needs and preliminary project economics.
‘Defining conceptual processing steps for Linka is a significant step.’
Viking Mines managing director and chief executive officer Julian Woodcock
Notably, the proposed plant design has been built with flexibility at its core. Management believes a flowsheet using a modular approach could allow future additions, such as Wet High-Intensity Magnetic Separation (WHIMS) or a Falcon concentrator, if subsequent test work points to stronger recoveries.
Optionality is often valuable in mining, particularly for specialty metals such as tungsten, where recoveries and concentrate can materially impact project economics.
Mineral Technologies has now begun specification and sizing work on mechanical equipment, which is expected to feed into early cost estimates.
At the same time, Viking says it’s continuing test work on rock breakage and energy usage, supported by newly collected metallurgical samples. The results are expected to provide early guidance on power demand, water and reagent requirements.
Additionally, the company says it’s assessing whether certain plant modules, including the crushing circuit, should be purchased outright or leased to reduce upfront capital costs and shorten development lead times. The approach suggests a capital-light strategy, favouring disciplined, staged project development over bigger, funding-heavy build plans.
Viking Mines managing director and chief executive officer Julian Woodcock said: “Mineral Technologies has designed a process flow that is both robust and flexible, allowing us to maintain a capital-efficient pathway to potential future development while keeping the ability to add additional recovery stages later.”
On the exploration front, Viking has signalled it expects to begin drilling later in the June quarter, ramping up a phase-two field program featuring geological mapping and follow-up of targets generated from gravity and magnetic geophysics, alongside historical trench results.
The company is also finalising a 3D geological model to sharpen drill targeting and potentially underpin a future JORC exploration target.
The company’s program appears well timed, with the global tungsten market continuing to grapple with a severe supply squeeze. Prices for ammonium paratungstate recently climbed to record highs of US$318.50 (A$448.50) per metric tonne unit, with one MTU equal to 10 kilograms of material.
The sharp run-up in prices has thrust Viking’s Nevada assets into sharper focus as Western supply chains hunt for secure, reliable tungsten sources.
In a bid to fast-track early cash flow and capitalise on record prices, the company has started quantifying historical above-ground stockpiles and material within a sizeable tailings dam.
The stockpiles are now being tested to confirm the high-grade potential of this low-cost feed source, building on earlier due diligence samples collected late last year that returned 0.8 per cent tungsten trioxide.
In parallel with the stockpile assessment, Viking has launched a grid-sampling program across the project’s tailings dam to estimate its volume, tonnage and potential economic value as an additional feed source for immediate processing or toll treatment.
With tungsten increasingly recognised as a strategic metal critical to defence, industrial tooling and high-performance alloys, Linka is shaping as a timely project in a prime jurisdiction.
If maiden drilling delivers and early economics stack up, Viking’s Linka tungsten project in Nevada could soon evolve into a serious new tungsten contender.
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