Sable Mining Africa Ltd the AIM listed resource company announced a positive update on the Lubu Coal Concession which covers 19,236 hectares of the highly prospective Karro Mid Zambezi coal basin in the established Hwange mining district in north-western Zimbabwe. The results confirm the potential of Lubu and importantly demonstrate the presence of a coking coal fraction in the Main Seam as well as in three other seams.
A 30 borehole first phase drilling program commenced on 4 October 2010 with three drill rigs and was completed on 15 December 2010. A total of 3,838m has been drilled in this phase and 197 samples have been submitted to the ALS Laboratory Group in Witbank, South Africa, for testing.
Modelling of the Main Seam has confirmed an upward revision of the inferred resource. In the 1980s, Messina Transvaal Development Services Ltd modeled an inferred resource of 334 million tonnes and that has now been increased to an initial figure of approximately 360 million tonnes of Main Seam coal only. The average thickness of this seam in these samples is 15.71m. No JORC or SAMREC compliant resource estimates currently exist for Lubu.
The initial 91 analytical sample results from the first five boreholes have been received back from the laboratory. These results have been encouraging as they confirm that coking coal is present, not only in the Main Seam, but also in the overlying 1A, 1B and 1C seams. Swelling Indices of up to 8 have been reported in these samples. Using a lower swelling index cut-off of 3 to define coking coal, 83% of the samples taken contain a coking coal fraction. The percentage yield for this coking fraction averages 21% in these samples.
Phase 2 of the drilling program will begin shortly. This will both in-fill the Phase 1 drill holes, in order to publish a JORC compliant resource on Lubu, and start the drilling of Area 2, which is south of the current drill location.
The Company's on-site exploration team, led by Johan Erasmus (a competent person in terms of the SAMREC reporting code), has also identified two new areas within the Special Grant that present a good opportunity for additional shallow coal and thus an increase in the Company's resource tonnes.
Mr Andrew Groves CEO of Sable Mining said that "These are encouraging results and underpin the prospectivity of Lubu. The raised inferred resource of 360 million tonnes is based only on the Main Seam, so we expect a substantial upgrade of this figure when we receive the complete analysis from the drill holes. The coking coal fraction across multiple seams is significant and adds further value to the project. We now look forward to Phase 2 of the drilling program, the results of which are intended to lead to the publication of a JORC resource and further value accredited to Lubu."
