The Manono Lithium and Tin Project lies within the mid-Proterozoic Kibaran Belt, an intracratonic domain stretching for over 1,000 km from just north of Kolwezi north into southwest Uganda. The belt strikes predominantly southwest to northeast and is truncated by the northsouth to north-northwest-south-southeast trending Western Rift system.

Historically the Manono Lithium and Tin Project has been referred to as the Manono-Kitotolo Deposit, comprising the north-eastern Manono Sector and the south-western Kitotolo Sector separated by 2 km by Lake Lukushi.

The area is covered by a variably lateritised eluvial cover up to 8 m thick and consists of orange brown sandy or clayey-sandy, loose laterites, crumbly laterites and hardpan laterites. Sandy alluvial material cover occurs along the Lukushi River and its tributaries. The alluvial and eluvial (including the lateritised material) cover contains significant cassiterite and minor columbite- tantalite mineralization and was mined prior to the discovery of the pegmatitehosted mineralization and is still mined by artisanal miners today.

Within the Manono-Kitotolo sectors there are currently 7 large discrete pegmatite intrusions recognized, namely Roche Dure, Kyoni, M’Pete, Tempete, Carriere de L’Este, Malata and Kahungwe, along with several smaller unnamed pegmatites.

The host rocks to the pegmatites comprise mica schists and mafic schists/amphibolites, the latter being more prevalent in the hanging wall to the Carriere de L’Este and Kahungwe pegmatites of the Manono Sector. The rocks are derived from sedimentary, probably argillic with subordinate arkosic compositions, and mafic volcanic protoliths (Spitalny, 2018; Dewaele et al., 2015) of the Kibara Supergroup.

The mica schists contain lenses of amphibolite and have a well-developed schistosity and compositional banding, with variations in the quartz and mica contents, parallel to the schistosity. In places the mica schists contain numerous staurolite porphyroblasts (>5mm) and may also contain tourmaline and rarely contain garnet porphyroblasts (Bassot and Morio,1989 and Spitalny, 2018). These rocks dip at ~70° to the northwest and vary locally from moderate to steep dips (50°-85°) with minor intra-folial folding.

The pegmatites have a surface exposure of approximately 12 km along a northeast-southwest strike with an average exposed width of approximately 400 m, but this varies from 50 m to 800 m wide (Kokonyangi et al, 2006; Dewaele, 2015), and true thicknesses of up to 250 m (for the Roche Dure pegmatite) to 3,000 m, are lens-shaped, thickest in the centre and thinning along strike, and often have thin offshoots parallel to the main pegmatite body.

The Roche Dure Pegmatite is the largest of the four pegmatites in the southern Kitotolo Sector. It is at least 2,800 m long, based upon exposed pegmatite in pit-walls and natural outcrops and with intersections achieved from the recent drilling. The pegmatite has a strike of about 055° and dips at about 40° to the southeast.

The pegmatite has a broadly lenticular shape and drilling completed by AVZ has confirmed that at its thickest point the Roche Dure pegmatite has a true thickness exceeding 250 m and thins along strike in both directions. The pegmatite is hosted by mica and biotite schists. The only distinct recognisable zone within the Roche Dure Pegmatite is a narrow wall zone of contact metamorphosed tin rich greisens (typically about 0.5 m-1.0 m but can be up to a few tens of metres thick); the remainder of the pegmatite is essentially homogenous with regards to the distribution of spodumene, when the entire volume of the pegmatite is considered.

The greisen’s are a minor component and were developed along the contacts with the host rock. They may also be randomly distributed within the pegmatites and discontinuous. Small lenses and larger partings of the host schists and amphibolites are common within the pegmatites and of variable continuity. The larger more continuous partings are more common towards the footwall of the pegmatite and to northeast, where the Roche Dure pegmatite thins.

Drilling by AVZ at Roche Dure has shown the depth of weathering to be more variable from 0 m to 100 m with an average depth of 43 m. A transitional zone is also recognised from the drill core where the spodumene appears fresh and unaltered, but the feldspars are weathered, and the core is partially oxidised and broken.

AVZ has decided to initially use contract mining for the operation and will review this position at the end of a 3-year cycle. Mining will be by conventional drill and blast as applicable to hard rock mining, with articulated haul trucks direct tipping into the ROM (Run of Mine) bin and onto the ROM pad for campaigning and blending.

Studies of ore stability and fragmentation suggest that both the Roche Dure Formation (overburden) and most of the ore body in the open pit are relatively hard pegmatite and can be mined with the use of Ammonia Nitrate Fuel Oil (ANFO) and emulsion for wet areas as explosives for blasting.

The Roche Dure Formation overburden is to be mined by drill and blast method using hydraulic excavators to load trucks. Any oversize material that may occur in the lithology will be broken by hydraulic rock breakers. Conventional 60 ton articulated mine haul trucks will be used to transport mined ore and waste rock to their respective destinations. Waste rock will be excavated and loaded into haul trucks (60 t capacity) that will transport the material from the open pit to a waste rock stockpile, located within the mining lease.

The waste rock stockpile is planned to reach 30 m high by the end of the Life of Mine (LOM). Overburden deposited on the dedicated stockpile will be spread and compacted by bulldozers and compaction rollers. The overburden stockpile reaches approximately 6 m in height. The overburden stockpile will be located not more than 3km from the Roche Dure pit.

Broken stock ore will be mined by excavators and articulated dump trucks, with ore breakage in the open pit being performed by drill and blast methodology. Once the ore has been converted into broken stock, the mine geologist will flag or mark the different ore head grades which are then moved to the ROM pad for direct tipping into the ROM bin ore is deposited on grade separation fingers on the ROM pad for later blending.

Once grade separated ore is stockpiled on ROM ore finger stockpiles, front-end loaders will load the ore directly into the ROM bin or onto the haulage fleet consisting of 60 ton class articulated haul trucks, depending on the economic, which will transport the ore from the ROM pad finger to the ROM bin for tipping into the ROM bin. High grade ore ex pit will be hauled directly to the ROM bin for feeding to the primary crushing facility. The high-grade ore will then be crushed and sent to the DMS circuit. Lower grade ore (with grades that are too low for immediate sale) will be hauled to the ROM pad and deposited on one of the temporary ROM finger low grade stockpiles.

The management of used tyre disposal will occur in a designated area within the waste rock stockpile footprint, where these cannot be used for road delineation and other useful purposes above ground.

All mining and support equipment will be diesel powered untilsuch time as the hydro-electric power plant (HEPP) is operational and electric mining plant is commercially available in the market. A fleet of mobile service equipment, including maintenance vehicles, fuel tankers/bowsers and cranes will also be used in the pit. Electrically powered lighting plants will be used for night-time work and electric portable water pumps will be used for in-pit dewatering. Mining activities at the pit are scheduled to operate on a 24 hours per day, seven days per week basis for 365 days per year subject to availability.

Process Plant Spodumene Concentrate (SC6)
The overall plant flowsheet is based on unit operations that are well proven in industry, including three stage crushing (primary jaw, secondary cone and tertiary High Pressure Grinding Rolls (HPGR), dense medium separation to produce a spodumene concentrate and gravity concentration to produce a separate tin concentrate.

The SC6 process plant will operate continuously (24 hours per day, 365 days per year) with a mechanical availability of 65% for the primary and secondary crushing plant ahead of the crushed ore stockpile, and 85% for the treatment plant including HPGR, feed preparation, DMS, tin gravity concentration and downstream materials handling.

The DMS process plant was developed to treat approximately 4.5 Mt/a of ore to produce approximately 700 kt/a of lithium concentrate with a grade of >6% Li2O (SC6.0). For production of primary lithium sulphate, 153 kt/a of this SC6 will be used internally, leaving 547 ........