New Age Metals advances environmental baseline studies at River Valley palladium project

New Age Metals (TSXV: NAM; OTCQB: NMTLF) is continuing the environmental baseline studies at its River Valley palladium project, 100 km east of Sudbury, Ont. This is the fifth year the company has been documenting water conditions at River Valley.

“We are pleased with the progress to date on the environmental baseline work at the River Valley palladium project, especially with the participation of technical specialists from the local First Nations groups,” said New Age chair and CEO Harry Barr. “By being so proactive at this early stage of project development, we are confident that NAM will be well positioned to accelerate future mineral exploration programs and project development studies.”

Baseline studies this year will focus on surface water and groundwater sampling as well as flow monitoring studies of the River Valley in the project area. Previous environmental studies focused mainly in the area of the Pine, Dana, Banshee, and Lismer zones in the northern part of the project.

The current studies will be led by Story Environmental and include participation of environmental technicians from local First Nation communities, namely Temagami First Nation (Bear Island) and Nipissing First Nation (Garden City).

New Age completed a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) for River Valley last summer. It outlined a 6,850 t/d open pit, underground mine, and mill with annual production of 47,400 oz. of palladium over a mine life of 16 years. Using metal prices of US$2,150/oz. palladium, $1,050/oz. platinum, $1,830/oz. gold, and $4.00/lb. copper, the PEA shows a pre-tax net present value with a 5% discount rate US$296 million and a pre-tax internal rate of return of 16%. After taxes, the NPV(5%) would be $140 million and the IRR 11%. 

The company has engaged SGS Canada to prepare a scoping-level study of using the Platsol process to recover platinum group metals without the need of smelting. Those results will be released when they are available.

Learn more about River Valley on www.NewAgeMetals.com.