Photo by: Bloomberg
PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Mineral sands developer Sheffield Resources has launched a prefeasibility study at its Thunderbird project, in Western Australia, following its successful capital raising.
Earlier this month, Sheffield undertook a share placement to raise A$11.5-million in funding.
The company said on Monday that with the raising now complete, Sheffield was fully funded to start its work programme at Thunderbird, as well as to undertake drilling at its Mt Vettel iron-ore prospect, in the Pilbara, and the Red Bull nickel/copper prospect, in the Fraser Range region.
MD Bruce McQuitty said that the company was building momentum following the outstanding Thunderbird scoping study results.
“The recently completed A$11.5-million capital raising has given us impetus to aggressively pursue our feasibility milestone at Thunderbird, targeting first production in 2017.”
The scoping study indicated that, based on a current resource of 2.62-billion tonnes, grading 6.5% heavy mineral sands, for 170-million tonnes of contained heavy mineral sands, the Thunderbird 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.