American Tungsten kinks off construction at Ima project in Idaho 

American Tungsten Corp. (CSE:TUNG) (OTCQB:DEMRF) 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.  

The Ima Mine 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 MTUs of WO3 and was subsequently explored for molybdenum and tungsten by various operators between 1960-2008.  

“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 is conducting a thorough review on the property’s infrastructure, and continues 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, adding 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 ($13.5m) market capitalization.