Drilling has intersected high grade heavy minerals outside of existing mining areas at Mineral Commodities’ Inland Strand area in South Africa.

The top result from the extensional drilling on the Western Strandline of the area are 37m grading 21.9 per cent total heavy minerals (THM) from a depth of 11m including 7m at 42.1 per cent THM from 31m and 3m at 67.3 per cent THM from 50m.

Mineral Commodities (ASX:MRC) had completed the second phase of infill and extensional drilling of the known mineralised zones on the Western and Eastern Strandlines in April.

This consisted of 256 holes totalling 5,595m in the Western Strandline and 107 holes for 4,236m in the Eastern Strandline, and was focused on resource definition outside the 162 and 163 Expanded Mining Right area.

“Exploration drilling at Tormin continues to reinforce the continuity and lateral extent of high-grade mineralisation in both limbs of the Inland Strands,” acting chief executive officer Russell Tipper said.

The company now expects to release a maiden JORC resource for the Eastern Strandline shortly and to deliver an updated measured and indicated resource for Western Strandline in the third quarter of 2021.

Inland Strands and drill results

The Inland Strands, which are held by the company’s 50 per cent owned South African subsidiary Mineral Sands Resources, were awarded in January 2020 and cover 1,741 hectares.

This prospecting area is 12km long and adjacent to the existing mining operations.

Two palaeo-marine strandlines have been identified – the Western Strandline that is 35m to 40m above sea level and Eastern Strandline about 86m above sea level – that have been interpreted by aeromagnetic data to run contiguously along the entirety of the coastline of its granted mining and prospecting tenure.

Previous work defined a JORC resource of 106Mt grading 12.4 per cent THM for the Western Strandline.

At the Western Strandline, Mineral Commodities drilled 11 holes to test the southern boundary of the known orebody.

Besides returning the thick high-grade heavy minerals intersection, these holes also indicate that two main mineralised horizons occur at a depth of about 6m to 20m from surface and 34m to 50m from surface over a strike of about 2km by a width of between 150m to 200m.

 

 

This article was developed in collaboration with Mineral Commodities, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

 

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.

 

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