The Bootu Creek manganese deposits are strata-bound, located at the contact between the underlying dolomite-siltstone Attack Creek Formation and the overlying ridge forming sandstone of the Bootu Formation in the Tomkinson Group, within the Ashburton Province of the Palaeozoic Tennant Creek Inlier. The mineralised manganese bearing sandstone horizon is folded around the gentle NNW plunging Bootu Syncline, can be traced for 24 km and dips around 30o towards the fold axis.

The manganese ore is supergene enriched within a deeply weathered profile. The Bootu Creek manganese resource models have a combined strike length of 16 km, with deposit models ranging from 0.7 km to 2.9 km in length. Mineralisation widths vary from 3 m to 15 m and ore mineralogy consists predominately of Pyrolusite and Cryptomelane in a silica rich gangue within the supergene zone, overlaying a Rhodochrosite and Braunite unweathered zone at depths of greater than 90m from surface.

All current and planned mining is by open pit mining methods. Open pit slope angles, determined by an Independent Geotechnical Consultant, are at an overall angle, including berms, of 45o to 55o for hanging wall and end walls, and with footwall batter angles not exceeding the local bedding planes.

Mining at the Bootu Creek Mine is carried out using a conventional open-cut method of mining, blasting and excavation using hydraulic excavators and dump trucks.

For 2021, mining will continue in the Eastern limb in Chugga Far North E and F and the Shekuma 8 deposits, with planned cutbacks at the Masai 5 and Zulu South pits later in the year. The mining operational requirement will decrease to 2 digger fleets and 8 haul trucks for the remainder of the year. This will result in lower mining costs, with the possibility of revisiting the strategy in the future if the market becomes more favourable?.

Higher grade ores from the Shekuma and Chugga Far North pits combined with additional lower grade manganese ore, which was previously defined as waste, will form the base plant feed for the coming year maintaining the current processing plant mass yields.

The current Indicated Mineral Resources for Tourag will be revised, and the Masai 5 and Zulu South deposits upgraded to Ore Reserve status in 2021, subject to satisfactory geotechnical assessment and optimised pit designs.

The Bootu Creek plant is a relatively simple crushing and screening operation.

The Bootu Creek plant is a relatively simple crushing and screening operation, followed by heavy media separation (HMS) to concentrate the manganese minerals. The plant is comprised of two separately built processing plants. The original primary processing plant (PPP) was commissioned in 2006 and processes the Run of Mine (ROM) ore while the secondary processing plant (SPP) commissioned in December 2009 abuts the PPP and selectively processes drum plant rejects and washed fines from the PPP and previously stockpiled drum plant rejects.

The recently commissioned Ultra Fines Plant (UFP) abuts the SPP and processes the PPP scrubber tails, recovered rejects and historical tailings deposits. The PPP was designed to produce a nominal 550,000 tonnes of product per annum, comprising about 420,000 tonnes of lump and about 130,000 tonnes of fines. Numerous capital upgrades and improvements increased the PPP’s production capacity to approximately 800,000 tonnes of product per annum. Th ........