Ru En

Acron Group and Rio Tinto Group forms Joint Venture Company to develop Albany potash prospect in Saskatchewan

The Joint Venture Company which was recently formed between Acron Group through its Canadian subsidiary and the Rio Tinto Group to continue evaluation of the development of the jointly held potash properties in Saskatchewan Canada, held its first Board of Directors meeting in London, UK today.

As previously released in December 2013, Acron announced a world-class potash resource had been delineated on the joint venture’s KP 405 potash permit in southern Saskatchewan. Rio Tinto’s 2013 Annual Report lists the KP 405 property as a Tier 1 discovery with encouraging potash grades and thickness.

“Since cooperation began in 2011, the joint venture parties have worked diligently on an exploration program within our permitted areas,” said Arie Zuckerman, President of North Atlantic. “The size, quality, and temperature characteristics of our Albany project in particular, position it as one of the best potash development opportunities in the world.”

The JV Company holds nine potash permits covering 586,000 acres in the southern region of the district. The work undertaken has focused on permit KP 405 (the Albany Project) with the completion of drilling 13 wells, a 3-D seismic survey, and the preparation of a 43-101 Compliant Resource Study.

The Albany Project is a massive, high quality resource, sufficient to support a world-class potash operation for many generations within mineral leases secured by the Joint Venture. The Project area contains an inferred resource of 1.4 billion tonnes within the mining caverns at an average grade of 31% KCl with a total recoverable amount of 329 million tonnes of KCl. The critically important downhole temperatures averaged 63 Co ranking it one of the highest in the region. The deposit will be developed using a solution cavern mining design which compared to a conventional underground operation normally results in lower capital requirements per product tonne, faster construction, greater overall flexibility, and ease of future plant scalability.

The next steps for the project include continuation of the environmental assessment and the pre-feasibility study.