American Tungsten kicks off construction at Ima project in Idaho

American Tungsten (CSE: TUNG) announced Tuesday it has commenced construction and building work to support exploration and mine planning at its Ima tungsten project in Idaho.

The rehabilitation and exploratory review work will enable definition drilling and bulk sampling to support the formation of its mine plan, it said.

Ima is a past-producing underground tungsten mine situated on 22 patented claims located in east central Idaho. Between 1945 and 1957, the property produced approximately 199,449 metric ton units of tungsten trioxide (WO3). It was subsequently explored for molybdenum and tungsten by various operators between 1960 and 2008.

“The team is excited to have come back from a successful site visit that paves the way to rehabilitation, environmental sampling and stakeholder relations in order to begin plans to bring Ima back to production,” American Tungsten CEO Ali Haji said in a news release.

American Tungsten said it has contracted rehabilitation of certain sections of the property’s road, is initiating collection of baseline environmental data and conducting a thorough review on project infrastructure, and continues the digitization of historical exploration information and modeling.

“Review and compilation of the historical drilling, sampling and metallurgical testing completed by historical operators has identified multiple drill targets across the property and demonstrated viability of gravity separation of tungsten and sulfide flotation processes,” VP exploration Austin Zinsser said.

He added that the team “developed a plan to initiate work where the prior operator left off, with delineation drilling and continued flowsheet development for the vein system on the upper level.”

American Tungsten’s Toronto-listed shares were up 7.4% at market close Tuesday. The company has a C$18.6 million ($13.5 million) market capitalization.