Matilda announces maiden Resource at Kilimiraka

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THE DRILL SERGEANT: Australian minerals sands play Matilda Zircon has announced a maiden Inferred Resource for its Kilimiraka mineral sands project on the Tiwi Islands.

The Inferred Resource contains over 890,000 tonnes of heavy minerals, which the company said, confirms the project’s potential for it to become the next mineral sands mine in the region.

Matilda Zircon technical director Peter Gazzard said the Kilimaraka resource had the potential to underpin an eight to ten year mining operation assuming mining rates of approximately 700 tonnes per hour.

“We plan to commence mining the Kilimiraka deposit once all approvals are obtained,” Gazzard said in the company’s announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange.
 
“We will immediately commence the environmental approvals process and lodge the Mining Lease application, with a view to fast-tracking this project to production.”

The maiden resource is based on the results of a recently completed program of extensive shallow auger drilling programs.

It comprises a total Inferred Resource of 56.2 million tonnes grading 1.6% heavy mineral (HM) for 893,700 tonnes of HM containing over 92,000 tonnes of zircon, 57,000 tonnes of rutile, 127,000 tonnes of leucoxene and 368,000 tonnes of ilmenite.

Matilda Resources said world market prices for this suite of valuable heavy minerals has increased substantially recently.

Because of this a significant opportunity has emerged for the company to take advantage of the subsequent strong market conditions and demand.

The recent drilling was halted when it hit the water table. However, according to Matilda it was generally still in ore, leaving the company to consider the deposit to be still open at depth.

Mineralisation is to surface so that there would be no overburden to be removed during mining.

“This is a large resource which will potentially underpin a significantly larger development than the company’s Lethbridge South and West operations,” Matilda said in its announcement.

“The Lethbridge mines combined will produce approximately 40,000 tonnes of heavy mineral concentrate which is less than 5% of the heavy mineral contained in the Kilimiraka resource.”