Platina Resources to drill Owendale in March

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THE DRILL SERGEANT: Platina Resources (ASX: PGM) has a new program of RC drilling on the company’s 100 per cent-owned Owendale platinum & scandium project in central New South Wales scheduled to commence in March.

Platina claims the Owendale project as Australia’s newest platinum discovery and the world’s most high-grade scandium deposit.

 

Location map – Owendale project, New South Wales. Source: Company announcement

 

The March drilling program has been primarily designed to enable Platina to increase the Indicated and Inferred Mineral Resource for platinum at Owendale, which is currently estimated at 12.7 million tonnes at 0.7 grams per tonne platinum for approx. 287,000 ounces (using a cut-off of 0.4g/t platinum).

Platina explained Owendale’s platinum resources are concurrent with an Inferred and Indicated Mineral Resource for scandium of 10.1 million tonnes at 340g/t scandium (3,400 scandium tonnes) using a 200g/t scandium cut-off.

 “We have already established a sizeable JORC-compliant Mineral Resource of approx. 287,000 ounces of platinum at the Owendale project, but we aim to significantly improve on that number during this program,” Platina Resources managing director Rob Mosig said in the company’s announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange.

“With regards to scandium, we already have a very large resource, sufficient to satisfy world demands for many years to come.

“Whilst we are increasing our platinum ounces with new drilling, we will continue our aggressive scandium marketing and other evaluation programs.

“I look forward to updating the market on this exciting new initiative as it continues to progress.”

The upcoming exploration drill program will test a number of targets outside the existing resource including immediate lateral extensions of the deposit where platinum has been recorded in historic drilling.

The 5,000m drill program is expected to take approximately two months to complete, subject to weather conditions, with final results expected to be reported in the June 2013 quarter.