Beijing, Nov 11, 2008 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Western Plains Resources (ASX:WPG) is an Australian ASX listed mineral resources company with advanced iron ore projects located in South Australia.
WPG has both direct shipping ore (DSO) deposits and magnetite deposits. In addition, a new type of deposit, a beneficiable feed ore (BFO) has been discovered.
The Company's iron ore deposits lie in the Peculiar Knob and Hawks Nest tenements in the Gawler Craton south of Coober Pedy. Initial resource development will be directed towards the Peculiar Knob, Buzzard and Tui haematite deposits (combined resource of 37.4 million tonnes @ 62.6% Fe) that the Company plans to bring into production at 4.5 Mt per year of DSO, for a ten project mine life.
The Hawks Nest tenement also contains over a half a billion tonnes of magnetite as banded iron formation, with significant exploration upside. The Company has completed a scoping study for the development of its magnetite assets, and the results of the scoping study are very promising.
WPG's BFO deposit also occurs in the Hawks Nest tenement. The Company is conducting metallurgical testwork on this material with a view to upgrading it to DSO specifications.
WPG will be undertaking further exploration at Hawks Nest and is assessing a range of development alternatives.
Moving forward, the Company will leverage off its resource and operational base in South Australia to investigate other iron ore projects, with the objective of becoming a significant, profitable South Australian iron ore producer.
Peculiar Knob DSO
The Peculiar Knob deposit has been defined by a program of sytematic drilling completed by WPG in early 2007. A block model estimate based these results and those from previous drilling gave a resource of 19 million tonnes at a grade of 63.7% iron as per the following table:
------------------------------------------------Category Million Fe% P% SiO2% Al2O3% LOI% tons ------------------------------------------------Measured resource 13.4 63.7 0.01 7.4 0.3 0.5------------------------------------------------Indicated resource 4.1 63.4 0.02 8.2 0.2 0.4------------------------------------------------Inferred resource 1.5 64.5 0.02 6.0 0.3 0.3------------------------------------------------Total resource 19.0 63.7 0.02 7.5 0.3 0.5------------------------------------------------
Hawks Nest Magnetite
The Hawks Nest Project covers an area of 407 square kilometres.
- 18.4 million tonnes of high grade haematite (> 60 percent iron) as at the Buzzard and Tui
- 570 million tonnes of high grade magnetite at a grade of 36% iron as per following table:
---------------------------------------Deposit Category Mt Fe%---------------------------------------Kestral Measured resource, Indicated resource, Inferred resource 220 36----------------------------------------Goshawk Inferred resource 148 34.8----------------------------------------Harrier Inferred resource 54 35.4----------------------------------------Eagle Inferred resource 92 31.3----------------------------------------Falcon Inferred resource 25 32.4----------------------------------------Kite Inferred resource 30 50.5----------------------------------------Hawks Nest Total resource 570 36----------------------------------------Deposit: Kestrel ------------------------------------------Category Mt Fe% P2O5% SiO2% Al2O3% LOI%------------------------------------------Measured 100 37 0.13 37 0.83 0.58Indicated 60 36 0.13 38 1.00 0.79Inferred 60 36 0.13 39 1.05 0.78------------------------------------------Total 220 36 0.13 38 0.94 0.69------------------------------------------
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