Sheffield Resources confirms high zircon at Dampier
THE DRILL SERGEANT: Mineral sands explorer Sheffield Resources (ASX: SFX) has received initial mineral assemblage testwork results from recent activity conducted at the company’s Dampier heavy mineral sand (HMS) project near Derby in the Kimberley Region of Western Australia.
Sheffield claims the results have confirmed the anticipated high in-situ zircon content of the Thunderbird HMS discovery.
The company said the mineral assemblage results indicate a high in-situ zircon content of 0.6 per cent for the high-grade domain.
It arrived at this figure by multiplying the average zircon content of 6.6 per cent by the average grade within the high-grade domain of nine per cent HM.
The high-grade domain averages 15m thickness over an area of 12 square kilometres and remains open in all directions.
Summary plan of results of the 71 drill holes received to date,
showing the area containing intersections greater than 5 per cent HM on a
greyscale elevation image. Grades within this area average 9 per cent
HM and the mineralisation averages 15m thickness. Source: Company
announcement
Sheffield said the results place Thunderbird in the top tier of zircon deposits worldwide.
“There are few heavy mineral sands deposits of this scale with higher in situ zircon content,” Sheffield Resources managing director Bruce McQuitty said in the company’s announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange.
“The Thunderbird discovery is proving to be both high-grade and large scale, presenting an outstanding opportunity for Sheffield to emerge as a major HMS developer.”
Sheffield explained it had determined the mineral assemblages using QEMSCAN on 35 composited HM samples from 14 drill holes.
The composites were selected from high, medium and low grade ‘domains’, corresponding to five per cent HM, two per cent HM and one per cent HM cut-offs, respectively.
For the high and medium grade domains, the initial mineral assemblage averages 7.1 per cent zircon, 1.2 per cent rutile, 1.4 per cent high titanium-leucoxene, 2.9 per cent leucoxene, and 31.7 per cent ilmenite, with the zircon content ranging up to 12.3 per cent in certain sections of the deposit.
The company considers these results indicate mineralogical variability within the thick, high-grade heavy-mineral intervals.
The composite samples were selected from just 14 of the first 71 drill holes for which assay results have been received.
Further QEMSCAN analyses will be undertaken once assay results from the remaining 93 holes of the maiden drilling program have been received.