Australian Bauxite Limited (ASX:ABZ) Announce 5 Million Tonnes Maiden Taralga Bauxite Resource
Sydney, Sep 16, 2010 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Australian Bauxite Limited (
ASX:ABZ) has 30 bauxite tenements in eastern Australia covering more than 7,100 km2 and is well advanced in its program to complete first-pass exploratory drilling of all project areas during calendar year 2010 - 6 months ahead of schedule.
ABx is also preparing to enter into commercial discussions during the remainder of 2010 with potential partners and/or offtake customers for a few of its 30 project areas. Taralga EL 7357 located near Goulburn, southern NSW is one of those areas earmarked for discussions. A site visit is being conducted on Thursday 16th September and for that reason, ABx is announcing all information it has at hand including a small maiden resource that has been discovered to date from the preliminary, first-pass drilling.
A more extensive resource infill drilling program is planned for 1H 2011 but because of the discovery of very thick zones of good quality bauxite between 10 metres and 13 metres thick, some follow-up drilling has commenced at Taralga in the last few days. This may generate data sufficient for a resource upgrade later this year but the follow-up drilling program is primarily focussed on assessing the general potential for easily mined bauxite zones of Direct Shipping Ore grades. Taralga is located near a major railway line leading directly to Port Kembla export terminal. A Review of Environmental Factors is underway which will clear the way for a more extensive testing program.
ABx has applied for an exploration area adjacent to Taralga EL 7357 to ensure it covers the prospective ground for bauxite in this district.
The deposit lies at surface on topographic high point which have been largely left uncultivated because of the poor soil that develops on bauxite. The iron levels are generally highest in the top layer of iron-rich gravel (technically described as pisolite layers).
Parts of the deposit have been confirmed as high grade, Direct Shipping Grade ("DSO" bauxite) up to 13 metres thick and these areas will be assessed by the current follow-up drilling and drilled in more detail during the first half of 2011.
BENEFICIATION CHARACTERISTICS
Beneficiation: The bauxite samples have been screened at 0.26mm size with the coarser fraction retained and analysed so as to start the assessment of beneficiation. The following results are crude totals only and do not include any assessment of excluding iron-rich pisolite layers during mining. More beneficiation test work will be done when follow-up drill results are received over coming months.
Note about the increased tonnage: applying the cut-off grades to the screened grades leads to more intercepts and thicker zones downhole that exceed the cut-off grades. Hence, the tonnage of in-situ bauxite above cut-off grade can increase with screening. The yield factor has not been applied to the tonnage quoted above because not all material would require screening.
Yield: the simple total, volume weighted average yield on the 0.26mm screen is 63%. The tonnage in the table (see link at the bottom of the release) is the in-situ material above cut-off grade prior to screening and the grades are the grades of the screened material sizing greater than 0.26mm.
RESOURCE ESTIMATE METHOD
Drilling on a random pattern governed by site availability was done in the northeastern part of EL 7357 to test several of the many prominent bauxite plateaus.
During August 2010, 98 holes were drilled totalling 710 metres. Drill samples were collected at 1 metre intervals from the aircore drillholes and analysed at ALS Laboratories in Brisbane including trihydrate (THA) available alumina (Avl Al2O3) and reactive silica (SiO2 Rx) measurements. Leach conditions to measure available Avl Al2O3 and reactive SiO2 Rx were 1g leached in 10ml of 90gpl NaOH at 143 degrees C for 30 minutes Estimation was done by a polygonal modelling using Voronoi polygons with a tightly defined resource boundary around the holes. Bauxite density was conservatively assumed at 1.8 dry tonnes per cubic metre in situ.
For the complete Australian Bauxite announcement including figures and tables, please refer to the following link:
http://www.abnnewswire.net/media/en/docs/63730-ASX-ABZ-606043.pdf
About ABx Group Limited
ABx Group Limited (ABx) (ASX:ABX) started as a bauxite miner in Tasmania in 2014 & controls the Eastern Australian Bauxite Province. In 2020 to 2023, ABx also discovered Australia’s only true ionic adsorption clay Rare Earth Elements resource at Deep Leads in pine plantations 40km west of Launceston with a JORC-compliant resource of 89 million tonnes from only 29% of the mineralised outline, averaging 844 ppm total rare earth oxides that is the most enriched in the critically important rare earths, Dy and Tb, of any Australian REE deposit.
ABx has also developed a proprietary technology to produce fluorine chemicals from an aluminium smelter waste product and return the fluorine back into the smelters, thus reducing reliance on imported aluminium fluoride.
ABx has committed a large proportion of its expenditure into Research and Development and has found ways to capitalise on the main strengths of its bauxite type which is very clean, free of all deleterious elements and can be separated into different product streams using physical, chemical and geophysical methods. It has produced and marketed specialist bauxite products for the manufacturers of fertiliser, cement with high late strength for major infrastructure such as bridges and is in the advanced stages of approvals for production of metallurgical bauxite from its Binjour Bauxite deposit with JORC-compliant resources of 37 million tonnes of bauxite, in a joint development with a Chinese-focussed Australian trading company Good Importing International.
ABx is also preparing to produce fertiliser grade and cement grade bauxite from its DL130 bauxite quarry in northern Tasmania, 40km west of Launceston. This quarry is sited in the middle of the large Deep Leads REE deposit and may one day be a site for heap leaching of the REE using a low-cost, benign leachate with the same acidity as apple juice or tea.
ABx endorses best practices on agricultural land, strives to leave land and environment better than we find it. We only operate where welcomed.
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