March 31, 2008 The resource definition drilling campaign at the 24km strike length Lebtheinia deposit commenced in December 2007 and will continue throughout the first half of 2008. The objective of the drilling campaign is to confirm a large Inferred Resource of Blast Furnace (BF) grade magnetite-quartzite material in Q3, 2008. Drilling has been conducted over a strike length of 10km of the Lebtheinia South deposit (see recent photographs of the drilling campaign below). A total of 27,000m (105 boreholes) have been drilled to date and samples processed. Thick, favorable sections (some of over 300m) have been intersected at the northern end of the 10km target zone and are currently the main focus of the drilling. Reconnaissance drilling has also been done on the Lebtheinia North deposit and a decision for further drilling will be made, and results announced, once all the analytical data has been processed.
In 2006, Sphere completed geological mapping and a ground magnetic survey over the deposit that was used to
complement the existing data collated by SNIM during their exploration programme in the mid-1980s. Based on the results of the previous campaigns by SNIM and Sphere, Sphere’s geological team completed a reconnaissance drilling campaign on the northern part of the Lebtheinia South Deposit over a strike length of 6km. This data was used to set an initial shallow exploration target of 700Mt – 1,000Mt at a target concentrate grade of 68-69.5%Fe and mass recovery of 26-28%.
