Hits High-Grade Mineral Sands At Tormin Inland Strands
Mineral Commodities Ltd (ASX:MRC) and its empowerment partner, Blue Bantry Investments 255 (Pty) Ltd, are on target to release a maiden JORC Mineral Resource for the Eastern Strandline Mineral Sands Project in South Africa following the completion of the second phase of resource drilling.
The step-out and infill drilling programme at Inland Strand has been completed with a total of 9,831m drilled, consisting of 256 holes for 5,595m in the Western Strandline and 107 holes for 4,236m in the Eastern Strandline.
Acting Chief Executive, Russell Tipper, said the drilling programme focused on resource definition outside the 162 and 163 Expanded Mining Right area in the Western Strandline as well as the Eastern Strandline.
Significant results from the extensional drilling on the Western Strandline to the south of the 162 and 163 Expanded Mining Right include:
- Hole Cl-01) 6m @ 40.5% THM from 34m
- Hole Cl-02) 6m @ 46.4% THM from 34m
- Hole Cl-05) 37m @ 21.9% THM from 11m, (Including: 7m @ 42.1% THM from 31m and 3m @ 67.3% THM from 50m); and
- Hole Cl-08) 18m @ 23.3% THM from 12m (Including: 5m @ 32.3% THM from 21m)
“Exploration drilling at Tormin continues to reinforce the continuity and lateral extent of high-grade mineralisation in both limbs of the Inland Strands,” Mr Tipper said.
The Inland Strands are multiple palaeo strandlines running semiparallel to the coastline and within the Geelwal Karoo farm prospecting tenure. Two palaeo-marine strandlines have been identified, which consist of a Western Strandline (35-40m above mean sea level), and an Eastern Strandline (~86m above mean sea level).
Aeromagnetic data indicate that the Inland Strands run contiguously along the entirety of the coastline of the company’s granted mining, prospecting and application tenure. The drilling programme targeted a geophysical aeromagnetic anomaly previously identified as a buried palaeo- strandline by MSR in 2014.
The strandlines are a concentration of high-grade Valuable Heavy Minerals (VHM) with overburden horizons above the strands in the form of Aeolian facies (orange feldspathic sand), erosion surface facies (dorbank, silcrete, calcrete) and Red Aeolian Sands deflation zones that have also been confirmed to be mineralised in places.
In January 2020, the company was granted Prospecting Right 10262PR to explore the Inland Strands area, covering 1,741 hectares on the Company-owned farm Geelwal Karoo 262. This prospecting area is 12km long and adjacent to the existing mining operations.
The first phase of the resource drilling (~7,000 metres), which focused on the 162 and 163 Expanded Mining Right area, commenced in mid-February 2020 and delivered a maiden JORC Code (2012) compliant resource of 106 million tonnes at 12.4% THMin the category of Measured, Indicated and Inferred using a 2% cut-off, reported in August 2020.
This second phase of the resource drilling campaign commenced in the first half of December 2020 and was completed in April 2021, with a total of 9,831m drilled on the Inland Strands, including infill and extensional drilling of the known mineralised zones on the Western and Eastern Strandlines.
