Owendale
Australia (PGM: 100%)
Platina Resources Limited is extremely pleased to announce the maiden resource estimation has now been completed by Snowden Mining Industry Consultants (“Snowden”), which adheres to the Australasian JORC Code and Canadian National Instrument 43-101. The resource for platinum of 13.1 Mt @ 0.7 g/t Pt (~293,000 ounces) has been estimated at a 0.4g/t platinum cut-off (Table 1). An Inferred Mineral resource for scandium of 4.8Mt @ 344g/t Sc (~1,700 tonnes) at a 200 ppm cut-off has also been estimated (Table 2). A total of 46per cent of the platinum resource falls within the Indicated category. The entire platinum and scandium resource estimate is contained within the weathered profile and is situated less than 50 metres deep and would be amenable to mining by open cut methods.
It is the Company’s intention to fast track the development of the Owendale platinum and scandium resources as soon as practicable. It is the Company’s belief that Owendale has the potential to become Australia’s sole platinum mine, with the added upside of coincidentally containing one of the world’s highest grade scandium resources. This Rare Earth Element (REE) has potential to significantly contribute towards the project’s economics.
TABLE 1-Total platinum resource using a 0.4 g/t Pt cut-off, and showing resource classification
Estimation carried out by Snowden Mining Industry Consultants, Brisbane. November, 2011
TABLE 2 - Total scandium resource using a 200 g/t Sc cut-off
Estimation carried out by Snowden Mining Industry Consultants, Brisbane. November, 2011
More information is available on the ASX announcement here
Project Background
Platina Resources’ Owendale Project is located in the Fifield region of New South Wales, approximately 12km from Australia’s only historical platinum mine, where production commenced in the 1880’s from the alluvial deposit.
Platina holds a 98km2 exploration licence over the Owendale Intrusion – an Alaskan-type intrusion composed of mafic and ultramafic lithologies. Platina identified a large geophysical feature from a magneto-telluric survey carried out over the north-eastern quadrant of the Owendale Intrusive Complex. The anomaly also coincided with a large aeromagnetic and ground-borne gravity feature identified by earlier explorers. An interpretation of the detailed ground-borne gravity survey was undertaken. The interpretation identified a number of primary fresh-rock anomalies deemed to be prospective for platinum. The anomalies are gravity lows, which were interpreted as dunite intrusives hosted in pyroxenite. Recent geochemical and petrological work has shown that dunite rocks are responsible for introducing the majority of the platinum bearing minerals at Owendale.
Platina carried out a 500 metre single diamond drill hole drilling program in conjunction with re-sampling of historic drill hole FKD-15 (drilled by the previous licence owner in 1987). The new drill hole aimed to investigate the coincident geophysical anomalies whilst re-sampling was conducted to achieve more accurate analytical analysis than was possible in the 1980’s. Re-sampling of the drill hole also showed spectacular platinum intersections. Following the success of these results, a second 500-metre diamond drill hole commenced in mid-October 2010, along strike from the geophysical anomaly and 200m due south of historic drill hole FKD15. Additionally, Platina re-sampled a second historic drill hole, FKD-16. The results returned numerous zones of significant PGM mineralisation.
Results from a broad first pass Reverse Circulation (RC) drilling program early in 2011 highlighted significant occurrences of platinum and scandium mineralisation in the laterite profile above the Owendale Intrusion. The successful results from the first drilling program warranted a second program which was designed to extend and close-off known mineralisation from the first drilling program. The second RC drilling campaign has now been completed at Owendale, 73 new holes were drilled over the intrusion, constituting 3,255m, in addition to almost 5,000m completed earlier in 2011.
Owendale’s grades for platinum are continually showing mineralisation persisting between 10 to 15 metres true thickness in the majority of holes drilled and high scandium anomalism and scandium have also been intersected within the laterite profile. These results are reflected in the Owendale Project’s new NI 43-101 and JORC compliant resource estimation which was completed in November 2011.
More information is available on the ASX announcement here
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