Sheffield takes Eneabba over 5Mt of heavy minerals

THE BOURSE WHISPERER: Mineral sands explorer Sheffield Resources has added to the resources base of the company’s Eneabba heavy minerals sands (HMS) project in Western Australia with the announcement of a maiden Mineral Resource for the Durack prospect.

Durack is one of six deposits Sheffield has identified within the Eneabba project.

Three other deposits (West Mine North, Ellengail, Yandanooka) have already been included in the project’s resource inventory.

 

Location of Durack within the Eneabba project. Source: Company announcement

 

The Durack resource adds 170,000 tonnes of zircon, 824,000 tonnes of ilmenite, 65,000 tonnes of leucoxene and 33,000 tonnes of rutile to the Eneabba project resource inventory, which now stands at 5.29 million tonnes of contained HM.

The company said Durack had exceeded its expectations since the initial discovery of near-surface mineralisation at the deposit in May.

“Durack adds substantially to our Eneabba project resource inventory and vaults us over the five million tonne contained heavy mineral milestone.” Sheffield Resources managing director Bruce McQuitty said in the company’s announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange.

“Importantly, Durack is a zircon-rich deposit with over 14 per cent zircon in the mineral assemblage.

“Sheffield continues to deliver on its strategy of building an inventory of near-surface high value zircon and rutile-rich heavy mineral sand deposits which will add flexibility and mine life to the rapidly expanding Eneabba project.”

Sheffield said its next phase of work at Durack will involve metallurgical testwork on drill composite samples to determine the deposit’s potential final product characteristics.

Once this work has been completed, the Durack resource will be incorporated into a revised economic assessment of the Eneabba project.

The company is currently waiting on assay results from drilling at the Drummond Crossing and Irwin prospects on the Eneabba project, which it expects to receive over the next few months.

Drilling is also continuing at the company’s Dampier zircon project, with first assay results expected in the near future.