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Broken Hill Prospecting prioritises 43 heavy mineral sands targets for future drilling

Published: 02:29 03 May 2019 EDT

Drilling at a HMS target
Previous drilling at one of BPL’s HNS targets in the Murray Basin

Broken Hill Prospecting Ltd (ASX:BPL) has made significant progress with drill hole targeting at its Murray Basin Heavy Mineral Sands (HMS) targets which extend across northwest Victoria.

With field activities in the Murray Basin region deferred at the request of landowners due to ongoing severe drought conditions, the targeting will greatly improve the efficiency of future drilling.

As well as the Victorian tenements, BPL’s HMS targets extends across southwest New South Wales and eastern South Australia.

READ: Broken Hill Prospecting's Murray Basin mineral sand targets form part of future focus

Modern aeromagnetics data covering more than 60% of BPL’s Victorian HMS tenements has been reprocessed with state-of-the-art filters specifically developed for HMS exploration.

There were 150 linear magnetic anomalies interpreted in the filtered magnetics with 43 regarded as having significant potential and prioritised for drill testing.

Highest priority targets

The primary targets are:

  • Extensions to the Pirro deposit mined by Iluka Resources Limited (ASX:ILU);
  • Extensions of the Gypsum and Tempy strands south of Ouyen; and
  • Testing of the Roselyn and Curyo strandlines of the Curyo area.

BPL has the largest tenement holding in the world class Murray Basin HMS province.

BPL has a strategy of undertaking low-cost mineral sands exploration in the Murray Basin of south-eastern Australia.

As a springboard for this, the company uses the huge exploration investment already made by major companies since emergence of the basin in the 1990s as a world-class HMS province.

The company holds title over highly prospective exploration ground in areas that are close to infrastructure that is crucial to bring any HMS discovery into production.

Mobile mining techniques

Newly-developed mobile mining and processing technologies have created an imperative to reassess the economics of a broad range of high-grade HMS strandline deposits where potential production has been discounted or indefinitely deferred by major HMS producers.

Strong market conditions

BPL’s strategy is supported by strong market conditions for rutile, zircon and ilmenite feedstocks with the outlook also providing confidence for steadily strengthening demand and commodity prices.

The company has previously defined JORC 2012 resources at the Jaws and Gilligans strandlines of the Central Para district in NSW.

Once resources are estimated to the required standard, projects can undergo internal assessment and ranking using economic parameters introduced by BPL’s new mobile production model.

BPL has also deferred all field activities at its base and precious metals projects around Broken Hill in far west NSW due to the severe drought conditions.

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