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Bulk Sampling(Mini) Bulk Sampling Diamond grades are usually expressed in carats per tonne (cpt) or more often, carats per hundred tonnes (cpht). It is the average dollar per carat value which is a determining step in the viability of a diamondiferous kimberlite to be a mine. Kimberlite grades in producing mines vary from approximately 25 cpht to over 400 cpht. One metric carat is equivalent to 0.2 grammes in weight, hence a large volume of kimberlite must be sampled to recover diamonds. Samples vary from a few tens of tonnes at the exploration stage to several thousand tonnes at the feasibility stage. Savannah operates a mini-bulk sampling plant where typically one sample is approximately 100 tonnes. Control of the mini-bulk sampling plant falls under Dr Alex Dak, Savannah's Laboratory and Special Projects manager. A state-of-the-art one tonne per hour DMS unit was purchased from Bateman's in South Africa and a crushing and screening front-end unit was fabricated by a Clarity Mineral Services company. Diamond recovery is undertaken with a Flowsort X-Ray sorter. The plant was constructed and commissioned from January to March 2008 and has treated approximately 400 tonnes of material to date from five kimberlites. Diamonds have been recovered. Gold and Base Metals There are two principal objectives to the metals exploration programme. The first is to evaluate the potential of the current Savannah licences for commodities other than diamonds. The second is to identify additional exploration opportunities in Tanzania so that Savannah’s metals portfolio can be expanded prior to spinning it out into separate companies. All mineral exploration programmes proceed in three phases: 1) target selection; 2) surface exploration and 3) subsurface exploration. The target selection process is completed mainly through the evaluation of available data on the target area, in this case the entire country. The data evaluation phase of the project started in July 2007. The initial phase of this review focused on gaining an understanding of the geology and mineralisation of Tanzania as a whole – this work is essentially complete. It became rapidly apparent that while a great deal of geological work had been carried out in Tanzania in recent times that no modern summary of the geology and in particular of the Precambrian aspects of the geology was available. A consultant with experience in regional data compilation was engaged to prepare a up-to-date summary of the geology of Tanzania which could be used as a basis for conceptual exploration planning. The first draft of this report was received in late January 2008. The literature search continued with an emphasis on gathering data on the types of mineral deposits in Tanzania. This review showed that the main commodities present, and of potential interest to Savannah, were gold, nickel-copper with or without platinum group elements, uranium and to a lesser extent copper-gold.
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