
Goulburn-Taralga Bauxite Resource up by 50% - 38 Million Ton
Sydney, May 31, 2012 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Emerging bauxite exploration and development company, Australian Bauxite Limited (
ASX:ABZ) has 40 bauxite tenements totalling more than 8,700 km2 covering the core of the Eastern Australian Bauxite Province. As announced on 30 May 2012, a discovery of extraordinarily thick bauxite at Mt Rae near Taralga, 40km north of Goulburn southern NSW in February-March 2012 has led to an expansion of the Pre Feasibility Study (PFS) for the Goulburn Bauxite Project and a resource upgrade has now also been undertaken as part of that expanded PFS.
ABx and Marubeni Corporation are conducting a AU$1.5 million pre feasibility study of the Goulburn Bauxite Project. This zone of thick bauxite increases the resource potential of the Taralga bauxite areas, near Goulburn NSW.
The district's deposits contain thick zones of premium grade bauxite, with good potential for more discoveries. All deposits are gibbsite-rich (trihydrate) bauxite, low in reactive silica and free of refractory mineral boehmite (monohydrate).
All horizons produce Direct Shipping or "DSO" bauxite.
Resource Estimation and Deposit Geometry
Areas of thick, good quality bauxite continue to be discovered across the Taralga - Mt Rae Areas and new bauxite target areas have been identified in new tenements that have been recently granted. Over the last 12 months, bauxite resources at Taralga have increased by 50% from 25 million tonnes to the current estimate of 37.9 million tonnes.
Metallurgical Results Encouraging: Main Production is DSO Bauxite Metallurgical tests on large samples have been conducted as part of the Pre Feasibility Study, with METS Engineers of Perth coordinating and summarising the testwork.
The Goulburn Bauxite Project deposits typically have an upper half that contains nodules or "pisoliths" of a black, glassy material which is an emery, comprising mainly fused alumina and trace iron oxides. Well-known bauxite mineralogist, Professor Eggleton of the Australian National University coined the term "PDM" for these black pisoliths which he found in bauxites from Weipa, Northern QLD. PDM stands for "poorly diffracting material" when subjected to X-ray diffraction.
Metallurgical tests on the PDM-bearing bauxite ("PDM-DSO Bx") from the Taralga area have been able to recover the PDM by gravity methods and the remaining bauxite is good-quality DSO bauxite, similar to the DSO bauxite that typically occurs in the lower half of the deposits. This means that overall, DSO Bauxite will represent approximately 80% to 85% of total tonnes produced from the Goulburn Bauxite Project. The recovered PDM emery material can be sold at good prices for industrial uses.
For the full tables, charts and data, please visit:
http://media.abnnewswire.net/media/en/docs/ASX-ABZ-680690.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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