High Purity Quartz Discovered in Western Australia
Sydney, Oct 7, 2024 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Cobre Limited (
ASX:CBE) is pleased to announce a High Purity Quartz (HPQ) Exploration Target at the Company's wholly owned Perrinvale Project (Perrinvale or Project) in Western Australia (Figure 1*).
Highlights:
- Multiple Quartz Units identified and sampled across the Perrinvale Project supporting a significant estimated Exploration Target of 5.1 Mt to 28.3 Mt at a pre-beneficiation SiO2 grade of 99.1% to 99.6%;
- Quartz units display pegmatitic textures and lacking any secondary minerals in outcrop are considered to be the product of metamorphism of the basal quartzites in the regional stratigraphy;
- All SiO2 assays fall within the feedstock grades for silicon smelting, with 94% of assays between 99.15% and 99.66% SiO2; and
- Further test work focused on contaminant deportment and beneficiation set to commence to determine amenability to upgrading to very high value ultra high purity end products.
In late 2023 mapping work on the Project identified saccharoidal quartzite within the Mt Alfred area on the east side of the Project. Lacking any visible accessory minerals or lithic particles, the potential for the Project to host HPQ was considered. Since then, the Company has completed desktop work and two programmes of fieldwork with analytical testing; identifying extensive, often pegmatitic, quartz units across the southern Panhandle area on the west side of the Project, culminating in this maiden exploration target (Table 1*).
The potential quantity and grade of the Exploration Target is conceptual in nature, and there has been insufficient exploration to estimate a Mineral Resource and it is uncertain if further exploration will result in the estimation of Mineral Resources. The Exploration Target has been prepared by the Company and reported in accordance with the 2012 edition of the JORC Code.
The Exploration Target volume and tonnage are based on field observations including the identification of outcrop margins and strike extents, with these utilised to calculate surface areas of the observed quartz units. For the lower case, the surface area was factored by 0.5, halving the volume based on observed surface extents. Some identified quartz units, shown in red on Figure 5, are yet to be physically checked and sampled in the field and these were not included in the calculations. Visited quartz units were rock chip sampled with assays utilised in determining the Exploration Target SiO2 grade ranges (sample points are shown on Figure 5* with assay data included in Table 3). The upper grade (99.6%) represents the average of the assays above the 50th percentile of all samples. While the lower grade (99.1%) is a conservative estimate being the average of the assays below the 10th percentile of all samples. Bulk density used to convert volumes to tonnages was assigned using the density of quartz (2.67 g/cm3) as a starting point and factoring for fracture and void space. The lower density of 2.52 represents a 5% void space, which is considered conservative based on field observations.
Commenting on the Exploration Target for Perrinvale, Adam Wooldridge, Cobre's CEO, said:
"The Company has long seen copper as a key exposure to growth stimulated by the drive to net zero and the associated electrification. Silicon is now recognised as another critical metal and this work by the team is demonstrating the Perrinvale Project has the potential to host very large resources.
While our interests in Botswana have been and will remain front and centre of the Company's exploration activities, we are excited to continue our exploration efforts at Perrinvale and work to deliver a Critical Mineral Resource. Establishing the potential to move the quartz exploration target from a valuable bulk product to an ultra-high purity product can be achieved with a relatively low-cost follow-on work programme with considerable value add."
*To view tables and figures, please visit:
https://abnnewswire.net/lnk/1939O14R
About Cobre Limited
Cobre Limited (ASX:CBE) is a copper and base-metals explorer with projects in Western Australia and Botswana. The Company recently discovered a new high-grade VMS deposit enriched in Copper, Gold, Zinc and Silver in Western Australia, and is currently exploring approximately 8,100 km2 of tenements within the Kalahari Copper Belt (KCB) in Botswana.
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