PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Mineral sands developer Sheffield Resources has increased the mineral resource at its Thunderbird project, in Western Australia, to more than three-billion tonnes.
The project was now estimated to have a measured, indicated and inferred resource of 3.2-billion tonnes, grading 6.8% heavy mineral sands, compared to the 2.6-billion tonnes, grading 6.5%.
MD Bruce McQuitty said on Friday that the resource upgrade represented an exceptional foundation for the Thunderbird prefeasibility study (PFS), which was due for completion in the first quarter of next year.
“We are delighted to have achieved two important objectives. Firstly, we have added shallow, high-grade resources in the up-dip region and, subject to optimisation studies, this is expected to add more years of high-grade feed to the front-end of the mining schedule.”
McQuitty said that Sheffield also substantially increased the indicated resource component, adding that the scoping study excluded the inferred resource, most of which had now been upgraded into the indicated category and would be incorporated into the PFS.
Additionally, the high-grade component of the resource has increased by about 46% to more than one-billion tonnes. The contained zircon of the total resource now stood at 19.3-million tonnes, making Thunderbird one of the largest accumulations of zircon in the world.
The Thunderbird scoping study indicated that, based on a resource of 2.62-billion tonnes, grading 6.5% heavy mineral sands, for 170-million tonnes of contained heavy mineral sands, the project could, on average, deliver 118 200 t/y of zircon, 545 000 t/y of ilmenite and 21 700 t/y of rutile and leucoxene.