Maiden drilling encouraging for Sheffield Resources
THE DRILL SERGEANT: Bulk minerals explorer Sheffield Resources has returned encouraging drilling results from its Yandanooka heavy mineral sand project located 50 kilometres northeast of Eneabba in Western Australia’s mid-west region.
The current drilling program is Sheffield’s first at Yandanooka, and its first since listing in December last year.
These latest results have improved on results from historical drilling by outlining a zone of heavy mineral bearing sand approximately 4km long by 1km to 1.6km wide and between 3m and 20m thick.
Within this zone is a coherent higher-grade zone, greater than 3% heavy minerals, which is approximately 3.4km long, 500m to 800m wide and 3m to 10m thick.
Sheffield’s confidence in the continuity and size and scale of mineralisation has also increased, resulting in a subsequent drill coverage closure to 300m x 120m.
Yandanooka is one of few remaining outcropping HMS deposits in the mid-west.
The project is situated on freehold land located 2.5km from existing road and rail infrastructure connecting to Geraldton port, approximately 140km to the northwest.
Yandanooka is one of several projects within Sheffield’s large tenement portfolio in the world class North Perth Basin mineral sands province.
“The results of the Yandanooka drilling are extremely pleasing, given the increase in confidence, and size of the deposit,” Sheffield Resources managing director Bruce McQuitty said in the release.
“This is an exciting start to our exploration program in the North Perth Basin, with one of our key mineral sands projects proving its potential at a time when we are seeing increased demand and strengthening prices for our target commodities.”
According to Sheffield Resources Yandanooka has a relatively high value mineral assemblage, averaging 13.1% zircon, 2.9% rutile, 59.6% ilmenite (at 64.7% titanium dioxide) and 11.2% leucoxene, based on six historical composite samples.
Sheffield will select representative composite samples from the recent drilling for additional mineral assemblage testwork and has resource estimation work scheduled for June.