Amanta acquires third Thai tungsten mine (January 21, 2008)

Amanta Resources (AMH-V, AMHFF-O) says a rock-sampling program is already under way on its newly acquired tungsten property in northern Thailand.

The Mae Chedi property is the third former tungsten mine the company has added to its portfolio recently. All the properties are located close to Thailand’s second-largest city, Chiang Mai.

Mae Chedi produced a tungsten-tin concentrate during the 1970s.

The mine owners conducted a rock-sampling program over the 14-sq.-km area, indicating an anomalous zone covering up to 30 hectares. Combined tungsten-tin values reached 0.3%.

Amanta’s rock and soil-sampling program is being carried out on a 500 by 500-metre grid with the goal of confirming the old numbers.

So far, the company has found large areas underlain by rocks with anomalous tungsten and tin including one area with assays reaching up to 1.5% tin and a smaller tungsten area with assays up to 7% WO3.

Tungsten mineralization comes in the form of scheelite that is associated with casserite (tin) and occurs in quartz veins and stockworks in granitic rocks. Mineralization also occurs in the contact zone between these and carboniferous mafic intrusives and is disseminated in both the granites and mafic intrusives.

Amanta says an initial drill program will start early this year.

The company has been busy on its other tungsten properties as well.

Assay values have not yet come in from Mae Lama, a quartz vein wolframite deposit that produced several hundred tons of tungsten per year during the 1970s. Drilling has confirmed that tungsten mineralization reaches a depth of at least 200 metres within the vein.

At Doi Ngom, a breccia-hosted ferberite deposit, shallow reconnaissance drilling has returned a 1-metre intersection grading 1.8% WO3.

Amanta shares were down 2 to 17.5 each on news of the company’s latest acquisition.