By: OrePulse

Zanaga Iron Ore Company has launched a bulk sampling initiative at its Zanaga project in the Republic of Congo, marking the first major deployment of equipment and personnel at the site in more than a decade, since 2014.

The AIM-listed company is extracting an estimated 30,000 tonnes of ore to assemble a 100-tonne composite sample drawn from the hematite zone earmarked for Stage 1 production — a phase designed to yield 12 million tonnes of iron ore product each year.

Once extracted, the material will undergo pilot-scale metallurgical testing to confirm the company's updated direct reduced iron (DRI) processing approach, while also producing enough concentrate to support specification analysis, engineering design, and evaluation by potential customers. The composite samples, taken from the primary hematite ore types found at the site, are meant to represent what the first five to ten years of Stage 1 operations would actually look like.

The overall program encompasses several stages, including preparing the site, excavating material, extracting samples, compositing them, and carrying out detailed material characterization. Equipment and staff mobilization began in July, after the company completed an equity fundraising round in May.

Zanaga's chief executive, Martin Knauth, explained that the program is intended to help define a revised Stage 1 base case processing flowsheet aimed at producing a DRI-specification product. This sampling work is a necessary milestone on the path to completing the project's front-end engineering design (FEED) phase — work that will ultimately inform progress toward a final investment decision and, eventually, full-scale construction.

Before launching the program, Zanaga completed all required permitting consultations with relevant stakeholders, including government ministries, the local prefecture, communities affected by the project, and traditional custodians of the land — all in accordance with the project's existing environmental and mining permits.

This renewed activity comes after more than ten years of minimal on-site work and arrives as the company focuses on realigning Zanaga's processing approach to produce DRI-grade output. The data gathered from this bulk sampling effort is expected to feed directly into the metallurgical and engineering work still needed to push the project closer to an eventual construction decision.