Drilling Commenced on New Bauxite Prospect
Perth, Feb 20, 2013 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Bauxite Resources Limited (
ASX:BAU) is pleased to advise it has commenced a program of work on exploration licence E70/2230 (known as Fortuna), adjacent to the 73.3Mt Felicitas bauxite resource. The bauxite rights to the Fortuna prospect are entirely BRL's while the Felicitas resource forms part of the Company's joint venture with Yankuang Resources Pty Ltd, the Bauxite Alumina Joint Venture ("BAJV") in which BRL has a 30% interest.
BRL's Fortuna bauxite drilling program consists initially of approximately 300 vacuum drill holes on 160 x 80 metre spacing for an estimated 2,000 metres. Drilling is scheduled to be completed by end of March, 2013. The drilling program will cover an area of predominantly cleared farmland of approximately 320 hectares and is designed to test the lateral extension of the Felicitas bauxite deposit. Felicitas is considered to have further resource growth potential as drilling programs to date have only tested a proportion of mapped laterite within the project area. The Fortuna bauxite prospect areas to be tested are shown in Figure 1 (refer to link below).
The BRL Fortuna bauxite prospect area is:
- situated on a small number of private landholdings;
- located approximately 100km north east of Perth, being 10km from the town of Wundowie;
- existing rail infrastructure ~15km to the north, providing a link to Kwinana Port approximately 100km away
The Company considers exploration on Fortuna a significant step forward for the Company.
The Current Felicitas Resource Details
The Felicitas deposit is situated on granted exploration tenements E70/3159, E70/3900 and E70/4021. It is comprised of a bauxite horizon of 2m to 16m thickness that is typically covered by 0.5m to 2m of loose overburden. The initial resource estimate, completed by Runge Limited, was based on 3,624 vertical holes drilled for 24,085 metres on a nominal 80m x 80m drill pattern. The available alumina and reactive silica results quoted are based on low temperature bomb analysis (143°C), and the results indicate that the majority of alumina present is as the tri-hydrate mineral gibbsite.
The deposit exhibits relatively low reactive silica levels, and the ratios of available alumina to reactive silica of nearly 16:1 are considered to be suitable in either a low temperature or a high temperature refinery.
The deposit is considered to have further resource growth potential as drilling programs to date have yet to fully test the lateral extent of the mineralisation and it is therefore not closed off. Table 1 (refer to link below) provides the current (June 2012) JORC categorised bauxite resources at Felicitas.
The Felicitas deposit is the largest of the resource bases that BAJV have defined within the northern Darling Range of Western Australia.
Location & Logistics
The Felicitas deposit is wholly contained within cleared farmland over which native title has been extinguished. It is approximately 10km north of Wundowie and 100km north northeast of Perth (Figure 2).
The Fortuna project area adjacent to Felicitas is situated on a small number of private landholdings that have been cleared for farming and grazing and readily accessible by roads. Importantly, access to the existing rail infrastructure does not require significant access to local roads for haulage.
View the complete Bauxite Resources announcement at the link below:
http://media.abnnewswire.net/media/en/docs/ASX-BAU-625516.pdf
About Bauxite Resources Limited
Bauxite Resources (ASX:BAU) (OTCMKTS:BXRDF) was established with a substantial tenement holding in Western Australia to develop new bauxite supply for the global alumina/aluminium industry. The Company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) in October 2007.
The Darling Range in the south-west of Western Australia (WA) is the world's largest bauxite mining and alumina refining region producing around 20% of the world's alumina. This area has mined bauxite and refined alumina since the 1960s. These industries are leaders in sustainable resource development and represent the fifth largest sector of WA's resource industry.
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